


Silver Bow

by androsjanicek



Category: Penny Dreadful (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Dom/sub, Exhibitionism, M/M, Original Character(s), Victorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-06
Updated: 2015-01-17
Packaged: 2018-02-28 10:37:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2729264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/androsjanicek/pseuds/androsjanicek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With Ethan in prison, Vanessa channels until she puts together some crucial parts of his history, including how he was turned. Then she initiates an audacious plan to save him. When things go wrong, Ethan and Dorian must find each other to answer some urgent questions about their fates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

If you must understand Ethan Chandler’s fate, know that it was set before he was born.

You have seen the ruffian he chooses to be. That is only one layer. One of those underneath corresponds to a young man from a very well-to-do family. His father is still alive, an important merchant and public figure in the railroad town of Wellington, Ohio.

Josiah and Francine Chandler had lost their first two children. The first only lived a few days. The second loss was much more painful. This little boy lived a healthy life up to age six. The parents watched him die during the last year of his life. He wasted away and there was nothing for the devout Lutheran family to do but pray.

At Josiah’s urging, he and his wife took a vow, renouncing every earthly pleasure to devote themselves completely to the prayer that was their only hope to save their boy.

Then, about four months into their trials, when their son’s body was wasted and he scarcely knew who they were, Josiah heard his wife crying in the kitchen late in the night. To her credit, she was trying to bear this tribulation bravely by muffling her sobs. The sin was his.

Her husband went to her and he comforted her. He knew the act to be a sin because their child never again responded to their speech or presence. The boy spent the next 8 months as an infant once more.

Josiah did not blame the woman that her womb greedily clutched his seed and decided to make something of it, though it was the wrong time to try and create life out of a blasphemy. The pregnancy fixed a selfish act in place forever. One accomplished in the pantry, of all places: worldly like the fruit it bore.

“How do you know all this, Vanessa?” Dr. Frankenstein demanded of the medium reclining in a light trance. “You can’t have channeled the father, or whatever you call it. The man’s still alive.”

“Perhaps the man is dead yet still lives,” Sembene spoke up.

“Vanessa has spent some time talking to various entities, Doctor,” Sir Malcolm said with a heavy dose of good breeding. “She has gone to a lot of trouble to collect information that may be the only way to save a colleague and a friend from the noose.”

If he was completely honest with himself, Victor found it more convenient that Ethan perish on the gallows. Alive, the American could some day find out about his lady friend Brona, reanimated and intended for a monster.

While Dr. Frankenstein was considering that no one was too quick to protest Ethan’s innocence, Vanessa’s tranquil voice continued.

All of this Ethan’s mother told him on her deathbed, shortly after his 20th birthday. His mother had always been his refuge. Francine had a talent for happiness, and she must have been extraordinarily gifted in order to remain serene while married to the dour-faced deacon who imposed a series of ostensibly Biblical rules on the household. Many of these rules were imposed on Ethan at whip-point, while others involved being denied meals or forced to clean a stable to some impossible standard for being unable to correctly recite all the begats from the Book of Chronicles.

Sometimes he was locked in his father’s storehouse to count every single button and nail, or made to pick grains of salt out of a dish of flour. He would always fail at these tasks, but worse than the beatings were these long hours imprisoned before the absurd.

His father must have known exactly how to bring misery upon his son. Ethan would look at the man out of the corner of his eye at dinner, sure he caught that petty, scheming genius hiding behind his father’s bland face.

Francine Chandler’s gift at happiness might have come down to her ability to ignore the things she found beneath her.

His father would say in a low, dangerous voice as the young man was getting ready to go out, “He’s going out into temptation and he’ll bring corruption back into this house.”

And the mother would continue with her needlework unperturbed. “Don’t stay out too late, my dear. And Ethan, bring that nice Millie by the house sometime.”

Ethan would come to think that his father’s misgivings about his only surviving son were not spiritual in the least. Both the sulking and explosive varieties of paternal anger were meant to prevent the two ebullient spirits near him, Francine and Ethan, from making the patriarch’s small spirit have such a bad showing. For Josiah Chandler was feared but not liked by the townsfolk, but Francine was a beloved and sought-after guest in any house. The hosts completely ignored her spouse on the few occasions he was invited.

“You must forgive him as I have,” Francine confided during her short but deadly struggle with cancer. “I thought that if only we could have a child we could find happiness together. My Ethan, your father hardened his heart against you before you were even born. As soon as I started showing he took you to be the thief that was stealing your brother’s life. If it is anyone’s sin, it is mine, and I have never for a day regretted bringing you into this world,” his mother whispered.

The young man clutched her hand, unable to imagine life without this person who turned even the harshness of his life into joy.

“Go far from here,” she continued. “I am content knowing that you have nothing to keep you in this town, my son. You have an adventurous soul, Ethan, and we both know you were born under a lucky star.”

It was true. Everyone said so. Ethan had been born with some preternatural charm and since a very young age had been able to wield it to get whatever he liked from anyone—with the notable exception of his father. As a very young boy he’d lacked the imagination to really make use of this talent, other than to skip more quickly through the lessons that didn’t interest him—mostly Bible study and math—so he could run around inspecting the animals, pulling pigtails and climbing trees. And all the other pursuits that his father called savage.

When Josiah Chandler realized the boy could manipulate any private tutor set before him, Ethan was sent to a private school for the very best boys destined for the elite professions. He excelled at sports and dancing, both of which were too showy for his dour father’s taste.

The young boy could never understand why his charm didn’t work on his father. Ethan hid in the school cloakroom once to listen to his father ordering the schoolmaster to punish him more harshly—use the stick, hold him back a grade, whatever it took to “bring him down a notch.”

“But Mr. Chandler, the boy is a bit of a free spirit, that’s all. I’ll have him to work any day of the week washing chalkboards if you like,” the teacher said, “But I can’t in good conscience take up a switch against him for being a bit too cheerful, and honestly making the day go faster for everyone. His jests are nearly always on topic. I have to think he does some part of his lessons in order to make sport of them so well. His examinations prove it.”

“You’re just like the rest, under his spell,” Ethan’s father had muttered. “One day you’ll all see what I see. It’s unnatural for a young man to be so well liked, coddled and indulged. A man does not live only for pleasure. You’re laying the path to hell for the boy, and he’s too soft to be able to resist the devil when he comes for him, mark my words!”

Up until that moment, Ethan was accustomed to his father’s daily traffic with hell. Some of the other young people from their church reported much the same—and far worse discipline, as he would no doubt have suffered without his mother to intervene.

But that day, Ethan peeped through the cloakroom door and saw his teacher sitting there frozen after his father’s exit. It took watching another person’s reaction to grasp that his father really believed his son was on the path to hell and wanted every possible trial visited upon Ethan to prevent it.

How could a father be so cruel? is what Ethan detected in the schoolmaster’s especial kindness after that. But the student had learned something else from his eavesdropping. His father loved him in a way and was desperately trying to save this third boy from what threatened to take him away. In this case, his father was sure it was the devil. But conversely, the boy’s idea of the devil began and ended with his father.

Young Mr. Chandler clung to the abundant affection from his mother and everyone else in the town after that. He completed his studies but chose to stay at home, near his lifelong friends. He had no shortage of jobs, and when he got bored and went on to the next, no one begrudged him. People seemed to shine brighter when Ethan was around them, and he liked being able to bring a little joy into the straight-laced town where the preachers all suffered for a lack of sinners, and the sermons usually focused on depravities going on in Cincinnati.

After his mother’s death, Ethan packed up his things in obedience to her wishes that he seek broader horizons. He was delighted to explore the vast country and knew her spirit was happy for him.

The young man never worried because his good fortune followed him. He found a way to see the country and get paid for it—as a part of a private militia dedicated to hunting runaway Indians affiliated with the Pinkerton Agency. His new comrades immediately noted his lucky star.

“You know you can’t never leave us, Chandler,” one of their band of five said on one of their missions.

“I don’t think of you like that, Mulroney, I’ve told you a hundred times,” Ethan joked.

“I mean that ain’t nobody been scalped since you joined up, and I don’t mind having your leftovers from the ladies following you around.”

“How do you do it, Chandler?” one of the other men pressed. “You pretty but I seen prettier, and I ain’t never seen womenfolk scent a man from a mile away like they do with you.”

Ethan laughed good-naturedly. He’d caught companions rubbing one of his shirts on their skin before going out for a night on the town. He’d even had his belongings searched many times for this good luck charm that had the ladies flocking to him no matter how tired and dirty he was from tracking Indians. And not just any reds, but some of the wiliest, most dangerous ones at that—the kind people wanted captured alive so they could charge admission to see a notorious Indian killer of white men, safely caged.

One or two of the band’s captives had killed themselves, sensing a sideshow in their future.

It really was an interesting way of life, perfect for someone who needed to use all of his wits or found himself getting bored.

The Indians obliged. The greatest danger lay not in the ones they tracked to cash in on a bounty for murder, but from their kinsfolk. The five men had suffered several raiding parties led by Indians trying to steal back one of their prisoners. Every once in a while the captives made such pests of themselves that the group decided to release the prisoner in question. They were mercenaries after all, with no moral vision to defend other than their own survival. And they were skilled at it. This band of five had grown close over three years of tracking together.

Then, over a period of days, the group lost their usual happy go lucky attitude. For nearly a week they’d woken up to find arrows embedded in the trees near their camp. During the day there was a sense that they weren’t alone, though no natives were sighted. Their horses were skittish as the five rode on the trail of a Choctaw who’d gone on a killing spree clear into California.

“Where’s that good luck of yours, Chandler?” Mulroney had asked in a tense voice, their nerves all on edge for the next random arrow. “I’m a great one for tracking, but I don’t like the tables turning on me one bit.”

“It doesn’t make any sense, is what I don’t like,” said Stevens, their expert on Indian tribes. “The arrows we’ve picked up have been all kinds of styles and markings. Either these are some smart redskins pretending to be from a bunch of different tribes¬—“

“To rescue a Choctaw we haven’t even caught yet,” another man put in.

“Or they’re tracking us for some other reason,” Stevens finished.

“I think my lucky star is still burning just fine, thank you. Nobody got carried off while we were asleep last night, did they?” Ethan joked. He was always able to defuse his comrades’ nervousness, but part of him was a little concerned by the idea that his good luck might be deserting him. He’d always thought it was the protection offered by his mother’s love, but he couldn’t deny that he sensed someone watching at all times.

All jokes aside, they did live with no small amount of danger, and when you’re far out in the wilderness you learn awful fast that mother nature didn’t care who you were. It had been a sobering experience when he first worked out that no amount of charm would fill your belly or protect you from frostbite. His father might have been right about his son being somewhat spoiled, but if he’d seen some of their scrapes with death even Josiah Chandler would have been forced to recognize that Ethan knew how to rise to a challenge.

His first months on the job, the city boy strove to be an asset and not a liability to his mates. That meant mastering the guns and knives that were the tools of his new trade. Ethan had a basic-level familiarity from the household servants who gave him lessons on the sly. His companions marveled at his natural marksmanship, but Ethan knew it was about the only thing in his life he’d worked for, even if it did come easier than for most.

Then came that night in the Mesquite Mountains of California. Ethan was the one on first watch. Beyond the altitude, it was late October: the air was cold and he was watching a light coating of snow come down. The lookout post had been constructed of a screen made of twigs and leaves and set, as was their custom, where the watcher could see the most likely intrusion point as well as keep an eye on his mates.

This night’s sentry had his head raised from behind the screen. Maybe the sky could tell him how big the storm was going to be. Then the clouds cleared for a moment and Ethan froze at the sudden light illuminating him.

The arrow hit his neck with a glancing blow from behind, evidently from a scout who had gotten close and then waited for just such an opportunity to take a clear shot.

If they were that close, why did they miss? Ethan was asking himself as he crumpled to the ground. Only as the paralytic spread through his bloodstream did he consider that the Indians wanted there to be a white witness as they took the rest of the camp. His limbs went numb. He fought through enough of the panic to realize something was even more dreadfully wrong than a standard raid.

For there wasn’t a red man in sight. His friends’ voices joined in a shrieking chorus. From where he’d fallen, Ethan, unable to look away or even blink, watched two of his friends get dragged out of their tents and slaughtered.

These moving shadows were wild animals, but why would so many have been drawn to their camp? Ethan had learned that you don’t begrudge a wild thing its way of life. Steer clear of the grizzly and her young, and she might return the favor. Wait for a storm to have its way instead of daring it to shoot you in the ass with a bolt of lightning.

The paralyzed man racked his brains for knowledge about wild animals he wouldn’t be able to act on anyway. Some of what they knew about avoiding being a critter’s meal they’d learned from the Indians. Their prisoners also had no desire for a panther to eat the camp while it slept, and the band learned to see tracks and dung and then set traps based upon the likely predators for the terrain. But no one had seen signs of wolves being close by.

Ethan was watching his friends being ripped to pieces by the snarling beasts, and his drugged brain concocted a mad, hopeful story. He decided that the Indian who had shot at him must have been aiming for one of the wolves. He couldn’t decide why that arrow had been dipped with a drug, but he clung to the idea that this Indian had survived the attack and felt enough loyalty to his species to rescue Ethan.

His comrades had already stopped screaming.

The paralyzed man still had a few silent screams left in him as he watched the savage creatures playing with the pieces of his friends. He saw a head and partial torso being tossed around by gleeful jaws not too far away.

When most of the feral barking was through, Ethan prayed they’d somehow not noticed him. But of course no animal could fail to note the wet scent of a human’s fright. One by one, the glowing-eyed beasts came within a couple yards of him and stopped, sitting in a ring with their heads on their paws. Waiting. Because he couldn’t blink the man’s eyes had been streaming for some time. But he was also weeping out of impotent terror.

Ethan was ashamed to have an audience to his sniveling, even if they were a bunch of animals. They sat there staring at him and he thought he would go mad with suspense. He thought of his mother.

Then there was one wolf slowly padding towards him, and Ethan was gargling his frozen throat to tell them to make it quick. Death was better than one more moment as a prisoner in his own flesh.

The wolf came up to him and softly tugged one of his arms out front. It looked at the pack, as if wishing every beast to see what he was doing. The human’s heart was beating out of his chest while he mentally said his first goodbye to a body part. The wolf bared his teeth.

The fang slashed across his forearm. The wolf stood there panting as if it were a house pet waiting to be patted on the head for its handiwork. Then the animal lapped at the blood welling from the wound, but instead of beginning its feast, the creature merely smeared it around on Ethan and on its own muzzle. The beast licked over the human’s face, and the man was forced to endure the taste and smell of his friends’ bodies being spread across his mouth and nose.

He began to feel warm, unbearably warm with the snow falling all around. Sweat sprang out of his skin and Ethan choked on a syllable. The head wolf licked his forehead.

The creatures began their infernal baying, and he lost consciousness.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> These are the happiest memories of his life with Silver Bow.

Ethan woke up with a raging thirst, not at all sure that he was glad to be alive. His eyes were blurry and his head ached, which he attributed to the lingering effects of the poison arrow. He crawled to a nearby stream, which could only wash off some of the effects from the night before. Then he stepped over the pieces that used to be his friends and ransacked their tents for supplies.

He was unable to think of last night’s paralysis as something caused by another. He was the traitor who had done nothing to help his friends while they were being slaughtered, and who was now stealing their effects for himself.

Ethan had no idea what to think about being the sole survivor, but some dark instinct reminded him of what his comrades used to do to steal some of his luck with the ladies. He avoided all of his own belongings and emerged into the cold day with a combination of other men’s clothes, water jugs, blankets and knapsacks that might not have a scent the wolves could trace to him.

He also collected as many letters from home as he could find, hoping to write to these wives and mothers and tell them something gentler than the truth about these men’s demise.

He saddled up one of the horses that hadn’t broken free when the beasts descended and lashed himself to the animal so his weak limbs didn’t have to strain to hang on. Another horse with supplies was hooked to his.

The survivor lay their with his arms around the horse’s neck and cried with gratitude that at least one thing had seen how badly he behaved and didn’t reject him for it.

They started towards the town they’d left behind in their search for the Choctaw. Ethan tried to eat some of the corn bread in his sack, but he got very sick from just a few mouthfuls—no doubt because he was eating a dead man’s rations. The woods should have been clearing after walking for four hours steady, but Ethan was sure the poison arrow must have addled his senses. He was lost. It seemed wiser to stop than to go farther in the wrong direction, and the tracker dismounted to make a nest with some blankets. The lone man fell asleep with the two horses casting their large eyes back at his huddled form.

When he woke up, the horses were gone. Damnation, Ethan said to himself.

“Horses there.” The voice came from startlingly close. “Water.” He then heard the sound of trickling water, which he hadn’t noticed before he fell sleep. He must have some sort of fever, Ethan considered. Flashes of last night’s slaughter came to him and he grimaced.

Finally, he connected the warm voice with the beautiful Indian girl looking at him with wide, dark eyes framed by a long curtain of black hair. “Hurt?” she asked with a note of concern looking at the bite mark, which was healing better than he would have expected for only splashing it with creek water. It was scarcely even throbbing anymore. Rubbing his finger revealed a faint oily sheen. He sniffed it.

“Did you put one of those medicine bags on me?” he asked suspiciously, brandishing the finger at her. He’d heard stories of the kind of ill effects white men had suffered after such “help.”

The girl took a moment to consider his utterance with her head cocked, and then the lovely voice responded with several words in an Indian tongue. Ethan’s fuzzy head fell back, not able to decipher more than a word or two in a couple of the major native languages when he was at his best.

They stared at each other across the great divide of language and culture. Then she smiled and wiped his brow. “Help,” she said, pointing at herself.

He allowed her to help him stand. Together, they retrieved the horses and filled a skin of water at the stream. He followed her deeper into the woods because he had nothing else to do.

The small pot hanging over the embers of a fire looked very welcoming. The more than a dozen Indian tents, less so.

“There,” she said, and spread out a mantle for him. It was late afternoon and the air was already starting to chill, but he hesitated. “I wouldn’t mind a meal and maybe a little company, miss, but I’m not in the mood to fight off all of your brothers, or whoever those tents belong to,” he indicated the shelters betraying the influence of different tribes, from the plains Indians to much further east. It’s not like the tracker group had never seen a mixed band, but it was unusual.

“You safe,” she said, embracing herself several times for emphasis, and then set to reviving the fire. When she was through she saw his still-watchful glance.

She rolled up the sleeve of her coat and then her tunic and pointed to a scar. “I safe,” she said and then pointed to the other tents. “Safe.”

“You mean you all survived whatever those things were last night?” He tried to focus on the girl but he was starting to feel light-headed again. He focused on the designs embroidered on her clothing and heard her voice once more.

“I safe. Many things.” The Indian intonation was so soothing he almost missed the dark rebellion in the last two words. Was he supposed to feel alluded to, as white man, part of the vast machine set to dominate her people? Was this all some elaborate plot to slit an Indian hunter’s throat when he least expected it?

You could never tell with those folk, was his thought while he sipped some water. When Ethan first hit the trail, he had been excited to see what one of these exotic women would be like. But his experience had been much like that of the other men.

“They won’t stop you from doing whatever you please,” was how one man put it. “But they won’t help you, either. And no matter what you do, those squaws have a way of looking at you, of holding you in their eyes and then giving you back smaller than you were. And I heard tell of more than one fella who never had it work right after that. Some kind of spell or something. Or a pox. Not worth the bother, in my opinion.”

Ethan had told himself that Indian maidens weren’t averse to being with him, but since they only said a word here and there, it was hard to tell. After those few early encounters, he came to see them all as Indians, ciphers wrapped up in blankets scarcely possessing a gender.

Usually when he had a few natives tied up and in transit to collect the bounty, Ethan was too busy with trying to keep them from running off.

This girl was wonderfully different for the sick man. Her eyes were playful and challenging. She didn’t look right through him while she softened some torn up jerky in a pot of hot water and then ladled out the thin stew.

Ethan grabbed up the tin bowl and a spoon from the hearth. “Why are you helping me?” he asked, too hungry to care for the moment. Thankfully, the food was going down all right.

She watched him eat as if it were the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

The white man laughed as he put aside the bowl. After all his troubles, his old charm was miraculously back in place. There was no mistaking his savior’s look of desire. “I think you’re real pretty, too, young lady. Not like any Indian women I’ve ever known.” Their hot glance lasted a long time.

She straddled him and he instantly stopped feeling the gathering cold. And though he knew it to be a stupid idea with tragedy right at his back, the tracker allowed himself to be drawn into the girl’s embrace. He quickly stopped caring about being surprised by the other natives.

There was something overwhelmingly exciting about this girl: the way she smelled, the firmness of her flesh, which sprang back at him (unlike the other red girls, who had made him feel like he was drowning in some unnaturally yielding substance), her jangling earrings and bracelets. Though they were both clothed for cold mountain terrain, he could feel her flesh burning through all the layers of cloth and skins.

They tussled and he was lost from the first kiss. Lost in her long hair, feeling like this was what it was like to finally possess a red woman. His illness and his night of horror were forgotten. This is love, Ethan thought with a shock, and then with another shock that he had never known it before. All of those girls from his past were easy. But he needed this Indian maid more than anything, and she knew it. Ethan was grinding against her, both still too eager to bother to unfasten anything. His throat made sounds he’d never heard before, and her velvet cries answered him. One slim hand burrowed until it reached his hardness. He shot off without being able to stop it.

“Sorry, my beauty, you got me all excited. It’ll only take me a second to be ready again. Anything I can do for you in the meanwhile?”

She must understand English better than she could speak it, because the maiden gave a wide smile and pushed his head down, down. Ethan was not usually averse to doing this for a gal, but this time he was beside himself with desire as he tried to wrestle himself into her clothing with its unfamiliar fastenings. His heart pounding, Ethan ducked under the buckskin coat and tunic. He closed his eyes and felt the warm skin responding to his mouth, a cry, the moisture.

Then he understood it was far too much moisture.

He fell backwards. “You, but you.” He struggled to say the words. “Stars above! You’re a man!” he exclaimed stupidly, seeing the penis that had just ejaculated on him poking out of the leggings. “I should have known. Your voice.” It was a woman’s voice as long as you did not consider it might be something else.

The Indian was watching him closely. That tone that was still far from disagreeable said, “One,” indicating the face of a beautiful woman no matter what else was connected to it. “Two,” the finger pointed lower. “Two spirit,” the creature said to him.

Ethan’s fragile mind couldn’t understand what he’d stumbled into. “Are they?” he gazed at the other camps, imagining deformities worthy of a circus. Maybe that’s what these assorted Indians were—freaks not welcome in any society.

“Two spirit.” The Indian nodded while pulling down her clothes at the neck to show a scar. She pointed to the long wound at her shoulder. “Silver Bow,” the woman said (or so his mind thought of her when her leggings were closed). Then she pointed towards him inquiringly.

“Ethan,” he whispered.

“Ethan,” she said reverently. Her fingers almost caressed his cheek and the voice said invitingly, “Two spirit.” Her large dark eyes cast downward, with what he thought was belated shyness.

He then saw what the Indian was looking at. Though Ethan could claim ignorance about the first time, there was no explaining away his arousal now. The native traced the outline of the visitor’s excitement, which was, if anything, getting more painful by the second.

Ethan was horrified. A few times he’d indulged an overly attentive man with a playful embrace, but that was it. He felt sorry for these men—sometimes friends in a drunken moment—and chalked it up to his involuntary charm affecting the wrong target from time to time.

Night was falling rapidly and his head had begun to spin once more, faster and faster. The worn-out, feverish tracker fell into Silver Bow’s arms because he was frightened. The next several minutes were a blur of darkening sky and a rough yet comforting feeling that he finally identified as the Indian’s tongue licking his face.

There was a cracking of bones.

Ethan tasted death. And then many other new savors that were anything but unpleasant.

He opened his eyes and the darkness sprang back at him with untold textures and scents. He delved into them nose-first. Ethan suddenly had no more ill will towards this other penis that he now sniffed thoroughly with his new snout, which gleaned oceans of meaning from this simple act. The wolf in front of him gave an encouraging yelp that made him feel as though it were all right to linger as long as he needed on this new topography of fur and musk. Then the other wolf approached the pack that he could now make out hovering in the background.

Ethan watched the other wolves bow their heads and paw the dirt, which he understood to mean servility. He could discern Silver Bow from all the rest by the curving patch of silver fur on her left shoulder, and he did not wish to be parted from her. She was safety. When he finally walked on wobbly legs to sit by the leader’s side, she bounded ahead, never looking to see if he’d decided to run with her, but slowing the pack until he accommodated their stride.

During that first night of letting out his, Ethan only knew he was happier than he had ever been while letting out his new dual nature. When he was in his human form, it only troubled him slightly that he was two hunted creatures—a wolf/human combination that varied with the phases of the moon, and a man who was endlessly excited by this Indian who could seemingly change sex at will.

Sometimes he would watch Silver Bow chopping wood or squatting with the other men by the fire, and the Indian was completely a man in feature and gesture. Other times, even while doing the same activities, she was the enticing girl with the playful eyes whom he bedded every night as a woman, and who wore the same unisex clothes and jewelry every day.

In their language of broken words and gestures, Ethan tried to understand his mysterious mate, who was so different from their companions—already far from any white society.

One day he made Silver Bow dress up in his own clothes, which were proper to a white frontiersman. The result was exciting, but it probably wasn’t the clothes so much as the imperious look he received while enacting his fantasies. “You’re being very foolish, and I’ll have you later,” the indulgent expression said. No woman had ever looked at Ethan that way. It made his knees buckle.

Ethan launched his mouth at the suddenly male lips and the two wrestled onto the floor, the paler man assuming a different place in this new order. For how could he resist when the pack leader gave one of his grunting instructions?

The white man fell into this pleasurable new role underneath his mate and didn’t look back. The voice from his father was still with him, however, and Ethan Chandler couldn’t tell whether his father objected more to him being an animal or a degenerate. He was sure that his life as an outcast was probably exactly the sort of thing Josiah would have predicted for him. Only now the son had stopped feeling sorry for the angry man who had tried so hard to teach him self-loathing. Ethan was part of nature now, and nature never apologizes.

From the first night with the group, Ethan felt like he was finally who he was meant to be. He had always thought himself to be basically content, but now the world was full of a magic he might have had once in his earliest childhood. What he felt in the forest, on two legs or four, was harmony. This was what his charm gave to everyone else, but being an animal gave the changeling all that contentment and more.

This white man had given up nothing by throwing himself in with the band of outlaws. He needed Silver Bow so desperately that he only felt grateful when he found out his forced conversion into a werewolf had been carefully planned by his mate. The Indian had tracked Ethan for two weeks after catching Ethan’s scent upon the wind and then having a vision that this was his long-awaited mate. His charm had caught Silver Bow’s notice. Then the leader waited a few more days until the full moon to transform and show Ethan all the wonders of their shared life.

The other Pinkerton men’s lives seemed a fair trade.

It took the newest member of their tribe some time to understand that “two spirit” could mean changelings as well as homosexuals. The other men and women in the pack varied in their sexual interests, with only two of the men qualifying as two spirit both senses. Almost all of them were in established couples with some contact with the white world. But his Silver Bow was the accepted leader, having gone off on his own earlier than the rest and lived exclusively with a wolf pack, early enough that his sense of nature was completely instinctual.

This Ethan learned from Snake, an Ojibwe who spoke the best English and had put the most effort into understanding their situation astride the man/beast divide.

“Silver Bow couldn’t have been more than 9 or 10 when he was claimed by a wolf clan,” Snake told him. Like most of the band, he called her both a “she” and a “he.” “She doesn’t say much in her mother tongue, Muscogee, and you know she speaks less English.”

“But how does she tell us all what to do?” Ethan asked. The band was more organized than any group of soldiers he’d ever seen.

Snake shook his head. “She learned it from the wolves. I know when she wants us to crouch down and wait for an enemy to pass by, and when she wants us to attack.” Snake smiled. “In the same way, we know Silver Bow is very happy.”

Ethan never felt unwelcome or threatened for a moment with the other pack members. In his old life he would have hunted and feared them, but now they were clearly overjoyed that their beloved leader had finally found a mate.

And so had Ethan.

The former white man’s flesh hungered so for Silver Bow that he felt intoxicated even a half a mile away. And the newcomer ached when they were further apart than that. But if he and his mate were well—if they had a satisfying hunt when they were human or animal, a roll on the ground and enough in their bellies—the world was perfect. If some part of him was aware that he used to order his world differently, he felt little connection to that person.

There was so much to learn. The pack was teaching him their native ways of tracking and hunting. They granted him the deference of the second taste of the kill because he was the leader’s consort.

The other Indians shared their myths of the two-natured, explaining that they had each received the mark of the wolf as children, often presaged by dreams among their tribe. The bitten had only been encouraged to set out on their own when they stopped seeing humans as kin and began attacking them. When their wanderings had them cross paths with other Indians, Ethan saw the band’s true nature register like a shot. The Indians might hold their children close, but they gave a polite nod, as if to say, “We have no quarrel with you; please make no quarrel with us.”

Both groups were, after all, the hunted.

The pack was also thankful to have this white man who could blend in with the crowd and steal anything they needed on trips into town. Ethan needed very few things, but once he began dressing Silver Bow in his own clothes, the white man loved putting his mate in different city folk attire to accentuate one of his two natures. The occasional dress was nice, but in a fashionable suit with his hair pulled up into a hat, Silver Bow looked entirely a man, and this was no longer something to be feared.

The voice became deeper when it sounded into Ethan’s ear from behind, and the newest changeling mated eagerly in this way, with the voice scratchy from lust and the always hairless cheek rubbing against his. He even brought back a shard of mirror and together they watched this love that had made Silver Bow more himself but had made Ethan different.

Their close bond could be dangerous. Ethan became friends with Snake, in part because he wanted to learn everything he could about his one-of-a-kind lover. He also desired to pick up a few words to add to their limited vocabulary and to hear about the exploits Silver Bow would never brag about. But their leader was equally in the thrall of his mate’s attraction and fiercely protective of Ethan.

One day, Ethan and Snake were making arrows and talking about something insignificant. They must have been smiling too much.

A tomahawk whizzed through the air, cutting off a slice of Snake’s ear.

Since Silver Bow had an inhuman aim, there was no doubt that she could have done worse to the Ojibwe if she’d wanted to. But Ethan was the one trembling.

The leader strode up to Ethan and threw him to the ground. As in the privacy of their tent on the nights when he was male, Silver Bow made it clear with a grunt and a gesture what his lover was expected to do.

Consuming this sacrament in front of the others changed Ethan forever. The public homage Ethan was made to show there on his knees cemented their relationship. He was his. He was hers. And the world was theirs.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan recalls the loss that has marked his entire life. We also hear of how he briefly rejoined society and then abandoned it.

Strictly speaking, Ethan had forgotten the definition of fear—and several other human qualities—when he joined the pack. One day, on a visit to a small town outside of Chicago he was seen lifting some money from a cash register. It’s not like he’d never had to get out of a tight spot before, but this time nobody let on that he’d been seen.

Instead, he spent an enjoyable afternoon buying and stealing provisions. He was excited to see Silver Bow in a pair of suspenders clipped to the trousers Ethan found so enticing, though he’d also picked up a woman’s hair comb. Meanwhile, the sheriff helped the shopkeeper put his finger on what was unnerving about this thief with the easy smile that left you feeling slightly uneasy. There was some sense that he might be a wanted man, but he’d been caught stealing at least.

The criminal was captured riding out of town by the police lying in wait. All this time with the natives, Ethan had been carrying around the letters he took from his dead comrades, at first waiting until he had something to say before he tried to contact their families, and then as a memento for a self that once cared about such things. Once he was caught and searched, these addresses related to the notorious lost band of Pinkerton’s men were not enough to seal Ethan’s release as the tracker everyone feared dead. Instead, it made the authorities vary suspicious of Ethan’s role in the massacre.

Their prisoner was prepared to wait while they made their inquiries. The truth of his new wild life would inevitably be lost on these town-dwellers, Ethan decided—whether that was being the consort of a man, or spending three days of the month on all fours.

It was terrible being separated from Silver Bow. But Ethan knew that in three days the moon would be upon him. Then he’d scare the hell out of his jailer by darting through his legs as savage beast. And he and his love would be together.

Unfortunately, Silver Bow had evidently gone mad with longing and worry, leading to a highly imprudent attack on the jail during the day. All Ethan could do was listen from his cell while he heard it all go terribly wrong, resulting in capture.

He consoled himself that his lover would be in a neighboring cell for a few days until they broke out together.

Even though he’d made a business of hunting Indians, Ethan was still very naïve about the ways of the white man towards the red man. Jail was something more likely to happen to white men. He heard the scuffle and then the sharp spike of fear come from his lover’s pores. Then nothing. He felt that first heartbeat that didn’t come as a howling absence.

Then Ethan must have howled, because they said he gave no one any peace for the next two days. They were on the way to transferring him to a Chicago asylum at dusk when the full moon happened upon him. Ethan escaped and his friends caught up with him quickly enough. They communicated their sympathies for his loss in their special languages of grunts and head tosses and pawing at the ground. He was given first kill, a sign that they were willing to recognize him as leader if he wanted the post.

Ethan was exhilarated leading the pack, glorying in the violencel as a way to make the world pay for taking his perfect love.

But when he woke up the morning after the third day with skin between his teeth, he retched at the idea that it was from the person they killed for sport. The awareness of his true nature could no longer be held at bay by Silver Bow’s intoxicating presence. He might as well have been waking up the morning after having watched his friends being dismembered.

Frightened and confused, he hung on for a week or so, but Ethan came to feel as though he had disappointed these new friends—the very ones who dismembered his old Pinkerton comrades. The mixed feelings couldn’t be reconciled, rendering the homey life with the natives into something brutal and alien.

The band could sense something, he was sure, and the new leader shied away from making any decisions. He stole away from the camp rather than have to say goodbye to another civilization.

The once-again white man wandered for a long time after that. Alone, as if that made his two dual natures matter less. Only on the night of the full moon was the change involuntary, and he made sure to be far from people and the temptation of a human kill. If he happened upon some people out there deep in the woods, however, Ethan couldn’t resist the temptation to rend.

When Ethan needed humans for company rather than a quarry, he wasn’t particular about which gender he sought out. There would never be anyone like the endlessly sensual Silver Bow. And Ethan had lost the right to explain his life to anyone. When he tried he soon gave up.

Besides, it was safer to have few connections. Sometimes the changeling thought he would go mad when the change came upon him and there was no mate waiting on the other side with a bark and a bounding jump. If he were honest, the only real remorse the banished tracker felt was the loss of his great love. The rest was a sort of insipid nostalgia.

When the cipher of his own fate became too lonely, Ethan joined a traveling revue for a while, then another. He kept moving but he wasn’t in hiding, either. The authorities were either looking for him as a murderer, or had given up on him as a lunatic, but shooting things and unfurling the old charm were a way to pass the time.

One day he saw them in the audience. Pinkertons. “Six-shooter Sid,” as he called himself then, waited for them to approach his wagon after the show.

“Nice to see you again, Ethan. I’m Darrow. You remember me?”

“Of course, Mr. Darrow.” They shook hands: the old habits of civilization were so easy to pick up and so hard to keep going, the shooter thought. “I met you some years back, right when I joined up with Pinkerton. You were just transferring from Indian hunter to bank robber specialist. How’d that work out for you?” Ethan asked, going back to wiping the greasepaint from his face.

“Fine. This here’s Mr. Eggleton,” Darrow said. “Couldn’t believe it when you turned up near Chicago. Everyone had given up on you long before. How’d you manage to escape with your scalp attached to your head?”

Ethan waited for whatever was underneath the visitor’s easy manner to come out. “Just lucky I guess.”

“You should have headed home afterwards. That’s what I would have done if somebody tore all my friends to pieces.” Eggleton said in a friendly manner that never reached the eyes.

“Your daddy’s been all tore up since word got to him that you might still be alive. Wouldn’t rest until someone asked around, and what did we find but that nobody noticed any pieces of you mixed in with the others,” Darrow said as if he talked about counting body parts every day.

“What I saw, I can’t even say,” Ethan muttered. He was now able to remember the terror of that paralyzed night, but as always, unable to connect it with his new family who committed the atrocity. All that mattered was that his voice struck the right note of pain. He told his questioners, “I didn’t rightly know who I was for a time. A long time.” The men nodded slightly. “They hauled me off to the madhouse.”

The Pinkerton men were undoubtedly aware that he never made it to the asylum, but evidently they agreed with him that being sent there counted for something. And that any sane man probably would escape from such a fate.

“I’ve felt a sight less sociable since then,” Ethan continued. “I’m hoping that wandering around awhile in the back woods of hell is going to be time served for stealing $27.50 from a dry good store, but if you want to put me before a judge.” Ethan held out his wrists.

It was the right thing to do. “No, Ethan. Nobody thinks you killed your friends. Your father’s worried about you, though,” Darrow said, peering at him.

Eggleton continued the examination. “Sometimes people go native, and that’s a fact. You’re out there alone, you meet up with an Indian or two, and they have a funny effect on people. Their ways start to make a kind of sense. I had to hunt a few white men like that myself. Turned on their own kind.”

Ethan began to understand the other man’s presence as a sort of specialist in hunting nativized white men. “One man was trying to steal back as much land as he could and give it back to the redskins so he could become a full-fledged member of their tribe.” They all laughed, Ethan because he knew he wouldn’t be welcomed by any tribe now.

“We ain’t trying to lock you up, Chandler. Why don’t you make an official statement to the police, and then they’ll release you to your daddy?” Darrow suggested gently.

The captured white man let himself be taken in because the full moon was just passed, giving him plenty of time to reach Ohio. He tried not to think too much until it was with the animal brain that made everything very simple.

He was led into the nearest town to be photographed and examined and questioned again by the two men in the presence of the police. The interrogations lasted for days. Ethan was wondering why he didn’t make a break for it. He decided that for some sentimental reason he hadn’t wanted to deprive his erstwhile Pinkerton comrades of their bounty and moment of glory.

Darrow brought him back to his hometown, where they staged a celebration and the newspaper took a photograph of this man given up for dead. Old friends and neighbors wept over him, which luckily saved Ethan from explaining how the inexplicable had happened to him.

Through it all, his father was looking at him strangely, but the son couldn’t put his finger on it.

The elder Chandler insisted upon showing every bit of the fancy house he’d constructed after his wife’s death, all the riches he’d accumulated, even going so far as to show every inch of the crammed storehouses. Ethan half-feared he’d be forced to count all of the man’s wealth.

When the servants had served their dinner the two men finally were left in the elegant kitchen looking at their plates in silence. Then Josiah said, “I felt it go out of you boy. I remember the day and the hour. It was the third of March, about three in the afternoon.”

The son’s fork clattered on his plate. That was when Silver Bow was taken from him. Ethan was taken aback—didn’t his father usually consider the second sight to be putting on airs before the Almighty?

The familiar flat voice continued, “At that hour I knew I didn’t have to fear for your soul any more. I can see you lost something you used to have. You don’t have to tell me how you did it.” Ethan was staring at his father, wondering what else he could see. “How you made the devil not want you anymore, I mean. He was always circling around and you were going to come to grief. I was the only one who could see that.”

The merchant made a tentative move toward his son’s arm. It was meant to be a communion between two sad, reduced men, Ethan suddenly understood why his father had spoken to him as a peer and displayed all the wealth they could count together. He jerked his arm away. Silver Bow had forever saved him from such a tiny, pallid existence.

“You’re wrong, Father. The devil’s not circling around me because it’s inside me.” He thought back to the salty communion he’d received on his knees from Silver Bow while the other two-natured ones watched. Ethan’s lips curved up. “I’ve been consorting with darkness and I like it just fine! You don’t own me anymore, old man. I’m too far gone, you hear? Too far gone to be saved!”

Only hoping to save himself from an airless existence with his father, the younger Chandler grabbed the piece of fine meat off his plate, found his pack where it had been put beside a feather bed, and ran off, whooping, into the woods. It was one day until the moon cycle, and he’d endured being shut up in train cars with the Pinkertons long enough. He ran his low, loping way out into the woods and waited one more day until he could be perfect for a little while.

The group in Sir Malcolm’s parlor sat in silence after Vanessa’s voice halted.

“But what does it all mean?” Victor asked. “I no longer question whether creatures exist on the border of man and beast, and we believe that hemophagia is an infection that induces one of these states.”

“What is your question, Doctor?” Sir Malcom asked as he helped Vanessa sit up and drink a glass of water.

“He means, not why is this man the way he is, but why does he kill?” Sembene supplied, offering a drop of bitters to the exhausted medium.

“Quite. The hemophagia is by definition a need to kill, but we do not know that murder is intrinsic to the monstrous,” said the doctor, not liking that the servant spoke his thoughts more clearly. “At least one thing is explained.” The group gazed at him. “Ethan’s liking for the beautiful and indeterminate Mr. Gray.” They had heard about this liaison in great detail during one of Vanessa’s earlier ravings.

“Don’t speak of what you know not, virgin!” Vanessa’s deep mediumistic voice lashed out at Frankenstein. She thrust away the men who had been caring for her. “Mr. Gray needs something from our bonny Mr. Chandler, make no mistake! And Mr. Gray gives many favors in return.”

She began making lascivious motions and shrieking and tearing at her clothes. Sir Malcolm and Sembene carried her struggling to the bed. Dr. Frankenstein gave her a sedative.

“She’s been in and out of trances for the last few days trying to piece together Ethan’s past,” Sir Malcolm said, petting the dark hair. “Vanessa cares very much for our American team member, but I fear she is making herself ill to no purpose. It may not be possible to keep Ethan from the noose.”

The man paused and stared at the crucifix adorning Vanessa’s wall. “There might have been a time when I would have cared more about questions of guilt or innocence, but that time is long past. I have a friend in line for the hangman, and I cannot rejoice in it.”

Frankenstein tried to muster the right expression of concern.

Sembene merely looked thoughtful.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From prison, Ethan regales his fellow inmates with some of the more pleasurable memories he has of a recent lover. Then he thinks about the time he thought himself cured of his condition. Vanessa throws down the gauntlet for Dorian.

His life would be short after all. What a mercy.

So Ethan thought after thoughtlessly transforming in the middle of town and killing two Pinkerton’s men in public had landed him in jail. But not quickly enough, because the moon cycle in between had been occasion for another bloody spree that made him the synonym for evil in London, even the prison.

Anything could be borne for a short while, and so the cell’s cold and damp had already found a place in his bones. It didn’t bother the American, as long as he could spend his last moments remembering happier days.

“Ya’ve got a girl someplace, mate?” one of the other prisoners’ voices asked again and again until it shattered a memory of sitting by the fire with Silver Bow and his old band.

“I’ve had a few,” Ethan answered because there was nothing to be done about it. Alfred, the prisoner closest to his cell, was an incessant talker and would badger him within an inch of his sanity until he responded. His curt reply was met with ribald jests from all the men in earshot, who relayed the conversation to those farther down the corridor.

Finally, they ran out of lewd remarks and someone realized Ethan had fallen silent.

“What, never found that special someone?” Alfred asked.

“I would have, with that face,” said James, who had taken a close inventory of Ethan when the newest prisoner was dragged past the Judas windows of the cells in the Hangman’s Alley, as the last stop before the noose was called.

“James here will try to bring you that spot of paradise before the hangman calls for you,” another voice that might have been Edgar’s said.

“That’s very kind of you, but I’m not in a temper for courting,” Ethan said. He only spent two days among the regular inmates, and in this time he’d had to drive home his disinterest in all overtures with the end of a fist. And only the most violent, desperate or depraved had even tried it, since his reputation for being the next Jack the Ripper made cooler heads desist.

It was the inmates’ excitement at being housed with the new Ripper that got Ethan sent to one of the separate cells, pending a trial that would soon confirm his capital sentence. Now he was with other notorious criminals, but even the worst of the worst were fascinated by the American brutality of his crimes.

“Why you done it, mate?” Alfred asked once again.

“Done what?” His life was a series of failures, one leading to the next, and Ethan was spending his last hours trying to untangle them, to no avail.

“Why you, you know, rip ‘em apart, like? I’m in here for doing my wife, nasty cunt always passing it around to all and sundry,” Alfred said. “But I did it because it weren’t respectable. It had to stop, didn’t it? But my Betsy’d drink anything down with a pint of gin, and I done for her, neat and clean with poison. You, mate, you made a mess such as they never seen. I’ve heard the wardens talking about it.”

A few affirmations floated down the hall and Alfred continued. “When they talk to you they’ve got fear in their voices, comrade. I can tell. Me, I’m a common cuckold. They’ll get another in here as soon as I vacate the premises. But you,” his neighbor’s voice took on an admiration of the exotic, “They’ll study your brain for a generation. Me, they’ve got to remind themselves who I am and I’m not even dead yet,” Alfred finished glumly.

“Don’t be that way, Alf. You’ll get a notice in the papers when you kick it,” James said kindly.

When the star prisoner hoped they’d at last gone to sleep, someone took up the earlier line of questioning once more.

“Hey Ripper, ‘ave you given up on the ladies because it don’t work no more?” someone called out.

“It works just fine,” Ethan snapped.

“Who was your last sweetheart, then?”

“A great beauty. And a firm hand, too.” He smiled despite himself at Brona’s strong will.

There were whoops. “I like a lass with some spirit.”

“Give us a story,” Alfred begged. “It may be your last chance to bring some joy to your fellow miserable prisoners.”

Ethan tried to pick someone completely unlike Brona. “I made the acquaintance of one gal not too long ago. She was a lady of society. Now, I don’t know how many of you gentlemen have bedded a lady of breeding,” there were noncommittal noises, “But they aren’t anything like a regular girl. You’ve got to treat them different.”

“More gentle, with good manners an all?” someone ventured.

“No, my friend, I can tell you’ve not ventured from Whitechapel,” Ethan warmed to his appreciative audience. “Or if you didn’t go looking for sin in such a district, perhaps you found a nice girl, one from the shops, or a laundress. A girl such as that, you pick her to keep because you want to protect her. Or at least, not cause her any more grief than—” his voice caught, thinking of Brona’s difficult end. “Any more sorrow than is her lot in life.”

There were some respectful murmurs.

“But rich women, they’re sick to death of kindness,” Ethan resumed. “They’ve seen it all their lives and they’re hungering for something else. The higher she is in society, the lower a lady wants to sink.”

“Like what mate?” “Tell us.”

“And you don’t have to sit around wondering what they want, because what have they been brought up to do but give orders? Back in America I had a few who were so particular about how they wanted it I could’ve swore they were giving me the measurements to make them some drapes to hang in one of their parlors.”

It was true. Ethan had fought off his loneliness with a few bored women of high society who thought him a simple brute rather than the specific kind of brute he was.

“What about this lady you were telling us about?” someone prompted.

“I thought this one would be the same. But she wasn’t,” Ethan reflected.

“No?” a voice said in disappointment.

“No, she was surprising. But she wasn’t the kind that made you feel more noble than you really are. She didn’t bring out the best in me.”

“If there is any,” one person remarked while another prompted, “Then what did she do?”

Ethan considered for a moment. “She gave me the strength to see my life all going to hell, and she looked at it with me. She was naked, really naked with me, the way even poor girls aren’t because they’ve usually got religion, or been beat down too much, or otherwise forgotten they deserve love. This one was taken aback that she still wanted something real. I showed her that, I think. I felt her, and she felt me, and we knew neither of us deserved it, and we drank it up before anyone could correct the mistake.”

The memory ran away with itself and Ethan sat wondering if it would come back to him when they threw the hood over his head.

Another question finally registered in his ears: “What was her name?”

Ethan thought quickly of the farthest thing from Dorian. “Maude.”

“Heh-heh, Maude the Bawd! Maude she was a bawd!” This contribution came from Joseph, an enormous and very simple young man who’d arrived at Hangman’s Alley a little earlier than the judge sent him there. The poor creature had a disruptive effect on the general population because he would do literally anything someone told him to do.

Joseph had been told often enough that girls had a very interesting secret under their petticoats but nobody would tell him what it was. No one had prepared him for how much his victims would struggle while he satisfied his curiosity, and several were broken by his great strength.

“Did you see ‘er again?” James asked.

“Huh?”

“Maude, I mean.”

“We didn’t know each other for too long, but we managed to see each other a few times,” Ethan reminisced. It seemed like so long since he’d seen Dorian, when it was only days before his capture. “Two times I saw her outside her mansion. Society people, I tell you, they love to play games. She wanted us to go out and pretend we didn’t know each other, me dressed in fine clothes she gave me. And then we pretended to see each other across the folks in their fancy dress. She told me to be very correct while she let everyone know in not so many words that she’d had me once and would have me again whenever she felt like it.”

The storyteller waited for the jests to die down. “Then she brought me to a toilet and had her way with me. The woman kept my tie so there was no way to get out of there properly dressed. She knew that with me looking and talking like I do people would think I was a rich lady’s caprice. Not that I minded the gratuity she slipped me in plain sight….”

“If you want to play at being a ruffian all the time, then I want everyone to see you that way,” had been Dorian’s reasoning for the whole carefully constructed evening. That was the thing about his most recent lover—where other moneyed individuals had roped Ethan into their own fantasies, Dorian was at least as interested in his paramour’s desires. Ethan had enjoyed the submissive pose, and Dorian enjoyed studying these reactions.

“And the other time she took you out?”

Ethan chuckled. “She arranged to have a picnic on one of the balconies at Parliament.” There was no reaction. “You all should know it’s impossible to hang around the roof of the Palace of Westminster with clothes on, much less naked.” He considered. “Maybe if you’re a bigwig from the House of Lords or part of the royal family, but then you would have all kinds of guards. My lady, she’s very clever about making impossible things happen. That night it was just us and the stars.”

Sharing the outdoors at night was obviously very special to Ethan, though he’d never formulated it that way to himself. But Dorian had somehow guessed what getting closer to the stars would mean to the American in exile.

“We spread out our rugs and lay back and fed each other fruits and cheese and smoked meat, and drank wine. We drank enough that she started missing her phonograph because she is one for music. My lady friend asked me what kind of songs people sing in America, and I taught her Yankee Doodle and the Yellow Rose of Texas. She tried to teach me Leezie Lindsay and was surprised that I knew every word of an English song. I taught her ‘Hope the Hermit’ because she didn’t know that one, and together we sang “The Bonnie Wood o’ Craiglee” and “Ye Mariners of England” and every other traditional song of these parts we could think of, breaking into fits of giggles at what anyone down below us must be thinking.”

The other men laughed with him. “And when we ran out of things to say it was getting cold sitting against the stone. We got under the blanket and warmed each other.” In this detail, too, Dorian had somehow guessed the togetherness Ethan had left behind in a shared tent in the American wilderness. He came back to the present. “I hope I think of that night when my time comes. It made a lot of other things worth it.’

Ethan felt the much less welcoming stone damp against him now and tried to block out the relentless questions from his cellmates so he could pretend he was back with Dorian.

“How on earth do you know all these English songs?” Dorian had asked him when they were tangled skin to skin and keeping their warmth trapped beneath the blanket.

“How do you know English songs?” someone asked from a few cells down.

“I learned them from a man I knew. An Englishman come to America to be alone.”

He ignored all the questions resounding from the neighboring cells and thought of Brother Simon.

After he ran off from his father’s house, Ethan had decided he cared nothing for humans anymore. He was a beast, and he was going to make good use of the simplicity of the beast. He remembered the stories of Silver Bow running with a real wolf pack for several years, and he thought she had the right idea in that, as in so many things.

Ethan set out into the forest to find wolf packs, but when he did find one, he was unhappy to discover that they had no wish for his company. Looking back, he realized that in his human form he couldn’t run as fast as they did, and his height would have drawn unwanted attention. All he knew was that they looked on him with a sort of pity, and nobody wants to be pitied by nature. They ran away from him after a few licks as some kind of consolation.

Experiencing this rejection from a couple of packs, and knowing that it would be no better with his old band, Ethan resolved to die.

Every Indian he ever met agreed on one thing: when you get to the end of your road, your spirit wasn’t going to hang around. You could stop wherever you were and wait for it to leave you. For a few months this creature, neither white nor native, neither human nor animal, lived for the moon phases and found it an agony to be kicked out of perfection for another month. After one such blissful change, he came to in a clearing near a stream, and he decided he could go no further.

It was during the warmest part of the summer and he lay there, dipping a hand into the water and moistening his lips, occasionally chewing on the right kind of his moss to ease the worst of the hunger pains. He imagined going to a place where he never had to be a man again, and he was ready for it.

He must have passed out and was dreaming he was dead because the next thing Ethan knew was a strange voice saying, “Brother, my brother.”

The moribund man opened his eyes to a deeply lined face with twinkling blue eyes and asked, “Am I dead?”

“No, my friend, this is still the valley of sorrow.” He must have made a grimace of anguish because the other face reflected it. “But I beg you to allow me to fill your stomach and tend to your skin where the sun has burned it. If after you have given me this gift you wish to leave this mortal coil behind, you will have made your humble servant happy first. Not a bad foot to leave on.” There was another twinkle.

Ethan was so surprised by finding kindness from a human when he had been chasing it in animals that he had nothing to say.

He drank the water at the intervals indicated by Brother Simon, who stuck leaves to his sunburn from the shade of a canopy he made with boughs. At last the patient was able to sit up and was allowed a mouthful of baked potato.

“Have you brought anyone else back to life before? You seem to know what you’re doing, whoever you are,” he was finally himself enough to say.

“A few. Please call me Brother Simon. I’m a hermit, but a restless one. Clotilde and I,” he indicated his mule, “Go into town only as often as I have to in order to remind myself why I don’t want to stay there.”

Ethan made a wry face at the idea of returning to town life.

“You understand. You didn’t come out into the forest to die, but to live.”

“Yes, Brother Simon. I want to be a natural thing, not an unnatural one,” Ethan said without thinking.

The man surprised him by initiating a very thought-provoking conversation about the nature of man after the Fall, and whether society could ever be fully an instrument of good, and all sorts of other questions that filled their hours as they trekked across the mountains and stopped for provisions in small towns, preferably, rather than large ones.

Simon was a skinny man who’d lived most of his life in towns and cities, but he had a remarkable ability to find a good pace and keep it up in all weathers and conditions. He said England had become too crowded for him, whereas in America a man could really breathe.

Soon after Ethan was well they arrived in a mountain village to buy a few vegetables and ammunition for the gun that provided their meat. Brother Simon earned his money by trafficking in holy medals. He told his new companion that the best way to always have the medals people wanted was to carry around blank pewter disks. On the spot he stamped the metal with a die from the set of assorted saints he brought from Italy.

Now Ethan was there to take a mallet and stamp the medal with the image of St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, or St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. Besides, the people liked it when the medal was blessed right in front of them with Simon’s fluent Latin.

Even non-Catholics felt something when they saw the ritual, and the medals sold like hotcakes to drought-afflicted farmers, childless women and the many other yearning souls they encountered.

Ethan had taken Latin in school, and he got used to the brother’s hymns and Pater Nosters from their time on the trail. The general rule was that while walking they spent their time in silent contemplation or pious chants, but at night before the fire the two men debated science and theology and shared any song in memory.

He was surprised that Brother Simon’s Latin blessings over the medals never followed any set pattern, one of several things that made him suspect this Englishman wasn’t a real clergyman at all, but an immigrant like any other who’d come to America for a fresh start.

They traveled together for about three weeks. Then Ethan had to face that the moon cycle would soon wrench him away from this human company. The pull of the wild was tantalizing, but he didn’t want to put his savior in danger. Even less did Ethan want to tell Simon why he had to go away.

They were walking down a path when Simon broke their silence. “My brother, I am a sinner like you. If it would help you to tell me what has your heart unquiet, it would be a privilege to listen.”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” he muttered. They continued in silence for another hour and then Ethan suddenly found himself crying. He sobbed out the whole story of his friends’ slaughter, his own change, living with the Indians, loving a woman who was also a man and losing Silver Bow. There was no reason not to. That night he and his companion would have to part ways. Any minute he should head in a separate direction.

“I need to go, Simon,” he sniffled. “You’ve been so kind to me that I can’t think of hurting you. You should be there to save the souls worth saving.”

The rangy hermit drew himself up to his full height. “My brother, I refuse to let you go.”

Ethan was surprised. “I’ll run off. On four legs no man can catch me.”

“Didn’t you tell me that you have an acute sense of smell as a wolf?” the brother asked reasonably. “Clotilde and I haven’t had a bath in a long time. Following you at our usual pace you’ll smell us for three miles, at least.”

“You can’t! Stay away from me!” Ethan panicked, then he understood. “If this is about following your beloved saints as a martyr, I want no part in it! I forbid you to follow.”

Ethan was just grabbing his pack from the mule when a blow struck him from behind.

The cleric knocked him out with the efficient use of their skillet.

A groggy Ethan woke up with the sun slipping over the horizon. He forgot why that was significant and then smelled the cooking fire and saw Brother Simon enjoying some roasted birds.

“I saved some raw for you in case you prefer it that way,” the hermit said imperturbably.

“You’re mad.”

“Probably.”

The two men gazed at each other, waiting for the moon to rise. A shudder went over Ethan as he felt the urge to change.

“I thought you didn’t have to change the night before the full moon; that the shift was only obligatory on that one night,” the brother said.

“I don’t,” came the dull reply.

But he wanted to. This three-day window was Ethan’s only brief chance to be who he really was, and giving up a night out of politeness was a lot to ask.

The brother tossed the raw meat at him and he fell on it, snarling. With a cracking of bones he was changed in a moment.

Through his wolf-eyes, people all looked the same. But Brother Simon didn’t. The man came up to him slowly but confidently with outstretched hand while uttering one of his prayers. The sound was calming. The wolf felt each of his hairs lay down one by one as the prayer continued and the hand stayed where it was.

Ethan sniffed it and found it didn’t smell like a normal person’s hand. Not like something to be overpowered. Just—clean. He licked the hand and Simon bared his teeth in a smile, which would normally make a wolf do the same. But he didn’t. He sniffed around while the brother ate and then kept watch while he slept. The next morning in the early hours he was bounding around to wake up the hermit without knowing why. The man scratched him on the ears, and it turned out that contact was all Ethan was waiting for before turning back into a man.

The next night was the same. The change ripped open his body and reassembled his guts. It was always disorienting the night of the full moon, but this time brother Simon was rocking and chanting. The wolf snarled, feeling the ungovernable urge to rend.

Something splashed into his eyes. Holy water, he found out later. While he was shaking it off the medal was roped around his neck by a lasso.

“St. Blaise,” the hermit explained after. “Known for coaxing a wolf to return a poor woman’s pig.”

Sitting still was too much to ask of Ethan at that moment, so he loped along next to the cleric drowsing on the back of the mule.

“You’re one of God’s creatures, Ethan. Else how would you have come to be?” Brother Simon asked reasonably when they had survived another night together.

Ethan couldn’t believe it. He had found peace as a monster. Simon had allowed him to feel all the bliss of connectedness with nature, and afterwards none of the guilt. He even learned that he could control some of what happened on the full moon, avoiding becoming a creature on all fours, staying a man with bestial features. They traveled this way for almost a year.

“Eh-eh,” Brother Simon said warningly the one time people happened upon their camp and peered at the monk’s cowl that the wolf-man borrowed for full moons. “This is my comrade, Brother Ethan, whose good looks have sadly been lost to a dread disease. A remarkable young man for the ladies at one time, believe it or not.”

When the travelershad passed on, the hermit observed, “I didn’t even say a Hail Mary, and yet you didn’t so much as snarl at those wayfarers. You have a conscience every day of the month, Ethan. You are not your condition.”

That was the last proof Ethan was waiting for. He was healed. Of course when the moon was upon him he only felt safe around Brother Simon, but he no longer had to be a slave to his passions. He was a man. A man with a strange fate, but one who also had a friend who didn’t treat him like a beast—not even when he was one.

Life was peaceful. It seemed impossible, but next to a human he had found the perfection of nature.

One day they completed Simon’s yearly pilgrimage to Santa Fe. It was the one large town the mendicant ever step foot in, and he only went there out of necessity. Every year the brother descended from the back trails to visit the silversmith who replenished his supply of blank pewter disks for his medals. This time, they were able to speed up this errand by dividing forces. Ethan took the mule to be reshod and looked at the busy streets.

The people seemed far away, as they did when he was running with Silver Bow and went to town to steal. This time he was mentally saying one of Brother Simon’s prayers to wish the people around him the same peace as he found on the open trails. He passed a few Indians and Ethan was seized by a desire to know where his old pack was running these days.

He followed behind several groups, struggling with the desire to ask after others of his kind. It took many frightened looks before Ethan realized he was frightening them with this interest that had nothing to do with violence. He wished he could tell them he was not to be feared.

The mule was ready, and so Ethan loaded it up with provisions, hoping to get away from the temptations of city life as soon as possible. Being looked at with fear by all those Indians made him feel more uneasy than he had in a year. It wasn’t pleasant to realize how fragile his new peace really was.

Sweating and jittery as dusk was drawing near, Ethan finished tying on the last sack and went towards the silversmith in a more affluent merchant’s quarter to retrieve his brother. Such a worldly place was doubtless wearing on the hermit as well.

“Brother Simon?” the silversmith asked. “You must be his friend. He left word that you should meet him over at the Johnson’s garden. That’s where he usually holds his blessing—tells me the flowers and green things make the people go over easier. The brother has a big following here in town and will probably be blessing people long into the night. He won’t turn anyone away, though he always says he will.”

Ethan followed the directions to the garden, but part way there his instincts were awash with dread. There was no one on the street, when the silversmith had led him to expect a big turnout.

He found the body of the hermit crumpled underneath a flowering bush alight with butterflies. Birds were singing as if it were sunrise. There could be no doubt that Simon was the real thing—a real holy man. Ethan felt terrible for doubting the hermit who had refused to abandon him, a half-man to a half-life.

Ethan lowered to the ground and uttered a few of Simon’s prayers because he wasn’t sure what else to do, but he couldn’t bear seeing the hermit abandoned in his cassock like a threadbare sack.

A policeman hovered some distance away as if he wished to be anywhere else. He beckoned Ethan closer. “It was some outsiders that knifed him. Thought he bought a mess of silver jewelry. They didn’t know it was junk, no offense,” he said pleadingly. “Nobody here knows what to do with him. Somebody went to fetch the bishop; do you think that’s what’s to be done?”

Ethan was suddenly resolute. “Simon can’t be buried in a town. He belongs out in the open and nowhere else.” He bent and gathered up the lanky body in its tattered cowl and lashed it to Clotilde. The policeman did nothing to stop him, and it seemed as though no one even dared come to the windows as the man and the mule walked back towards the countryside.

The pseudo-hermit understood what the people in Santa Fe felt about this particular murder happening on their soil. When in the presence of the blessed, the ordinary person feels embarrassed. That’s what Ethan felt as he buried the Englishman under a tree accompanied with prayers that were already being laced through with doubt.

Then he returned to town, sold the mule and made ready to travel light. Ethan tracked the two murderers as a man, not a beast. Out of respect for his friend, he thought, without considering that Simon wouldn’t support vengeance in his name.

It took him almost two months, but Ethan located the two adventurers who knifed Simon. With his training it was easy to surprise them camping on a trail to a gold mine. He knifed them without a shred of embarrassment or any other emotion.

A few days later the moon cycle began. Ethan took no special precautions, secure in what Simon had taught him about mastering his condition.

With his St. Blaise’s medal on its long chain around his neck and a St. Francis for good measure, Ethan gave in to the change. Soon his wolf-nose scented humans not far away, and he had run there before giving it a thought.

He woke up with human skin between his teeth after giving into the urge to tear someone apart. But what was worse was that everything he’d learned from Brother Simon had died with Brother Simon. Under the effects of a true holy man even a monster could be a man, but a bit of metal wasn’t going to keep Ethan from succumbing to his true nature.

Across London, far from Ethan’s cell, a domestic drama was taking place.

“She made it very clear she did not wish to see you,” Sir Malcolm said outside Vanessa’s door to the unannounced visitor. “If you insist upon entering, I think it best that someone observes this conversation to ensure she does not find it too—stimulating.”

“I apologize, Dorian, for this invasion of your privacy,” came Vanessa’s hoarse voice from the bed. ”One of my spirit beaux is always telling every little thing I get up to, which in this case includes what you got up to with me.”

“Vanessa,” breathed Dorian Gray as he stood before her. He thought he could not find this woman any more intriguing, but seeing her there with a nightgown falling off her shoulder amid the muddled scents of camphor, broth and blood made her even more alluring. Everything about her screamed a woman who was being steadily violated from within—whether by madness or actual spirits didn’t matter.

“Leave us, Sir Malcolm,” Vanessa said with some of her old aplomb.

“I do not think it is wise,” her protector, Sir Malcolm, said. “Mr. Gray is hardly a man of confidence. He has doubtless heard you have been unwell, but it only occurred to him to enquire after you this morning.”

“Either I am guilty of violating Miss Ives’ instruction to stay away, or guilty of not visiting quickly enough, but I hope to be forgiven now that I am in the presence of she who may pardon me,” Dorian said in his mildest tone.

Sir Malcolm was finally ejected from the room by Vanessa’s most imperious gaze, but not without a struggle over keeping the door closed.

“That was rather amusing,” Dorian said. “Am I threat to your virtue or something else? I do wish to play my part correctly.”

“So you would allow me to do the directing?” Vanessa mused while tying her dressing-gown. “I had always thought you were firmly ensconced in that pose.”

“You make me sound like a poseur, Miss Ives,” rejoined Dorian with a smile. “I have found that only by giving up control can one truly experience a moment. For instance, the most passionate specimens in my picture collection came from my photographer arranging the tableau, and me in it.”

“Do you really wish to succumb, or do you seek the watch yourself succumb? They’re not at all similar. I have my ideas about your preferences. Besides, I heard you were more likely to facilitate another’s passivity,” Vanessa said, reaching for the water jug.

Dorian’s hand arrived there first to tip the heavy jug into her glass. “I have had many pleasures, none so great as making possible the pleasure of another,” he said without embarrassment, catching her reference to a few dalliances with Ethan Chandler.

He watched her drink. “Do you enjoy what you do? With channeling, I mean,” he asked with the casual tone of a dipsomaniac contemplating a new liquid forgetfulness. He saw that Vanessa saw his eagerness and smiled.

“Enjoyment isn’t the right word,” she said, brushing a weary hand across her face devoid of cosmetics. “But there is a satisfaction in being useful. Even the most dangerous spirit has no one else to speak for it than me, their darling. It is so nice to be needed,” she finished with some bitterness.

“I cannot believe you are only the spirits’ darling, Miss Ives,” Ethan whispered. “I did wish to pay my respects as soon as I heard of your illness, but I was concerned.” He faltered. “Afraid that you would be some ghastly species of _kind_ to me, after exposing me to this thing called rejection.”

The stinging sensation that had been lingering since Vanessa broke off their relations in the greenhouse reddened his face once more. The woman studied his reaction like the flowering of a rare orchid. A cold/hot wave passed between them as the two impulses they shared went to war: cold, scientific observation versus a shameless trust in the carnal.

“I wish you to do something for me, Mr. Gray,” Vanessa said.

“At your service, Miss Ives.”

“You set no conditions?” she asked with something like a purr.

“None whatsoever,” the man replied.

“I want you to die,” Vanessa said.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plan to break Ethan out of prison works very well--up to a point. Certain details do not turn out as expected, and both Dorian and Dr. Frankenstein end up missing. The stratagem puts Dorian and Ethan in a position to begin to understand each other better.

“Ripper. Wake up, Ripper!”

Ethan thought it was merely the incessant din from the other prisoners and tried to hide somewhere deep inside his dream. He was back in his time with Silver Bow.

Most of the band was escaping from a hot day to bathe in a river. The leader who was his lover drew Ethan farther down from the others and into a shaded shallow cove. Ethan was pressed down to his knees, and as he conducted the business of pleasure he looked up to the sun glinting off of Silver Bow’s jewelry, saw the beautiful face with eyes closed, given over to the moment—

“Step lively, prisoner, unless you want your last meal to be kippers and mash, like everyone else’s.”

Ethan felt a thrill at the unexpected mercy of a short wait for his turn with the gallows. He was beginning to think that he would be forced to undergo the moon cycle within the prison walls, which would also mean death, but not death as a man. They had yanked him out for a brief, confusing trial and since then he tried to dream away the time until his unspecified demise. Now, a definite end to his life was such a relief that he didn’t grasp what this private last meal meant.

He was led a long ways down cold hallways where his nickname, “Ripper,” resounded amidst whistles against the stone. Finally they left the inhabited corridors behind. Ethan considered whether he had been lured out with the promise of dinner and would be hung before the papers got wind of it instead.

The guard showed him to a heavy door with no Judas window. The prisoner was thrown into a large room, empty of everything except innumerable candles, a table laid for a feast, and two chairs.

One of which contained Dorian Gray.

Ethan’s eyes struggled to adjust to this first glimpse of civility as his excort droned on. “We’ve never had a condemned man so well connected,” the guard said. “So nobody thought to write a rule that could keep out a chicken brought by someone with more solicitors than I have teeth.”

The prisoner took a step and the custodian’s heavy hand detained him. “They only allowed you a wooden spoon, but if you find a way to tear this one to bits you’ll die wishing you’d been sent to the gallows.”

“One hour,” Ethan heard, and then the door clanged shut.

“Dorian, how?” Ethan breathed after taking a few steps and faltering. He was afraid to besmirch the slim figure in evening attire with more than one kind of filth.

His visitor strode straight towards him and kissed him. “The hardest condition to negotiate was the room without a window, but it was a necessity. I didn’t want to end up in a cell myself after I finish greeting you.”

Dorian guided the large hand to his trousers and pulled down Ethan’s head by his hair, grown longer in his imprisonment. They groped and panted and Ethan was backed against a chair.

“Wait!” Ethan gasped.

“Forgive me. You are no doubt very hungry,” Dorian said. “There are three kinds of soup and a roast chicken and salad we can eat with our fingers.”

“No, I mean there are things I should tell you, tell someone, before they make an end of me,”

“There’s plenty of time for all that, man. If you only let me do this.”

Dorian sank to his knees, when usually Ethan craved being mastered by this intriguing person.

Dorian knew him well enough to sense the disappointment. The slim man stroked the bearded jaw and opened it to fill it with his tongue. “Be my master this once, and I promise to return the favor every day for a long time to come.” Dorian took to the floor and opened the grimy trousers.

Ethan’s few remaining rational faculties dissolved as quickly as his seed coursed into Mr. Gray’s talented lips.

While he panted, he was surprised to see Dorian pull out a phial and down it as he swallowed Ethan’s contribution.

Ethan received the kiss with a medicinal taste. “Shh, I’ll explain everything, but first do the same for me.”

He couldn’t understand Dorian’s meaning but he knew very well what to do with the swollen skin nudging into his mouth. The prisoner drew deeply on the member as if he were consuming the hope for a new life.

With his usual restraint, Dorian held himself from the brink. Long enough to say, “You need some things too much to die, my wild American. Now please, don’t swallow without taking this at the same time.” The fluid hit Ethan’s palate and he held it there long enough to down the bitter liquid.

“You have asked no questions and performed my instructions to the letter. Where has your defiance gone, my dear Ethan, how have they treated you?” Dorian said with some sorrow lurking beneath their usual banter. “Now please. Eat something while I explain,” Dorian commanded.

Ethan tore off a piece of the fragrant meat and then washed it down with one of the soups before he realized he was using campfire manners. But he was quickly drawn into Dorian’s tale. The visitor had to keep refilling his plate and bowl, and his cup with a lemonade that hid some kind of spirit.

“They wouldn’t allow a wine bottle,” Dorian explained and then returned to his tale. “So you see, all of your friends contributed to this solution. Sembene was the one who remembered an old African tale of two men exchanging forms for a time.” He smiled. “The original formula involved mixing blood with certain herbs, but he admitted that any life-fluid, as he called it, would do, and I thought you would find this more pleasurable.”

A gentleman’s hand traveled down the muscled back until it reached a sensitive place. Ethan paused his feast to shift in his chair and give the speaker an appealing look. Dorian contemplated the two wooden cruets for the salad and continued speaking.

“Dr. Frankenstein experimented according to Sembene’s instructions. I rather think he was put out when he made a caged white mouse and a brown mouse switch skins for a little while. The doctor is like all self-made men—can’t bear to be shown up by the servants. He’s been pouting constantly since we decided upon this course of action.”

Dorian untucked the rough prisoner’s shirt and kept speaking. “Sir Malcolm and I used our contacts---well in my case, my archive of compromising photos—to extort as many people as necessary to place me here this evening with the concoction in hand. You’re not actually slated to be executed for another couple of weeks. We knew the moon was almost upon you and didn’t want to contemplate what would happen if your condition overcame you in here.”

“What did Vanessa do for this scheme?” Ethan asked hoarsely as his pants were yanked down and he felt the salad oil dripping home. The medium had to be the mastermind.

“Vanessa had a vision that a certain ability of mine would help me, as you, to cheat the hangman.”

“What?” Ethan asked but he was distracted by the fullness he craved.

“Ssh, there’s no time to explain. Feel this, feel me.”

Dorian was pleased when he prevented any more questions. It was so easy for him to give into this violent coupling between monsters finding a quick pleasure at the end of the earth. Now that he understood more about Ethan it was easier to understand the attraction. Besides, Dorian was performing his role as assigned by the delightful Vanessa, who had evidently packed their picnic with more than one purpose in mind. Dorian held on to the glistening back and slid in and out of that needy muscle. He began to succumb while thinking of Vanessa, the director of his experience, planning exactly this scene.

For a moment, Ethan thought he heard the jangling jewelry that had always accompanied Silver Bow’s exertions. Then he realized it was the silver plates clanking against each other with every thrust into him as he leaned on the table.

Dorian drew out his pocket watch. “Hurry, the change will happen any minute.” He threw his own fine clothing to the prisoner and began dressing himself in the convict’s garb as Ethan followed suit. “Sembene said this might be a bit disorienting at first, but I expect you will take the transformation in stride.”

Ethan started at yet another frank mention of his situation. He’d not discussed any specifics about his condition with his friends. “What did Vanessa tell you?”

“Enough.”

And then there was a cracking of bones that was indeed very familiar to the werewolf. Only this time, his new, smaller body was still human. “You’ll have to resurrect that high-class upbringing you always tried to hide from me,” Ethan heard in his own voice. “I expect it will be enjoyable for you to treat the guards as if they should kiss that fine leather boot.”

Footsteps approached down the long hall and the key turned in the lock.

A whole series of people pressed in the door and looked disappointed to see two men in one piece.

“Hope you’ve got another outfit for me to meet the hangman in,” Dorian grinned with Ethan’s mouth. He saw the men looking at the smears of food adorning the prisoner’s clothing after being possessed on the table. The new prisoner gave a sidelong glance to the Dorian face that was blushing beside him. “I can be a little greedy.”

The guards didn’t quite know where to look. They came to shackle the prisoner once again, not noticing that it was the manacled Ethan who was reassuring his last visitor.

“It will be fine,” the false Ethan said.

The real American was just wondering if he should begin stowing away the candlesticks when the guards let in a servant dressed in livery who began efficiently packing the remnants of the meal. “If you ever remind me of dressing in this monstrosity for your benefit, I will kill you in an untraceable way,” Dr. Frankenstein hissed.

Ethan stood there helplessly in his fine suit and let the doctor pack everything into hampers and then lug it down the hall in the care of a guard who was lingering back with the gentleman.

“You know the Ripper?” the employee finally came out with. Before Ethan could think of what excuse the real Dorian would have used to make his way into the fortress, the guard blurted out, “Why’d he do it, gov’nor?”

“I don’t know,” the English voice came out with a sincere ring. “But he won’t be doing it anymore.”

“Aye,” the custodian said with relief, not noticing how falteringly the last sentence was pronounced.

They released outside and Ethan faltered for a moment, overwhelmed by the clear air of freedom.

“Keep walking, Mr. Gray, before they notice the fine manners of the criminal in hand,” Frankenstein whispered.

Soon they reached Dorian’s carriage and Ethan tried to help load the luggage, receiving a lethal glare from the doctor. Victor ordered, “Inside.” Ethan sat there in a daze while Dr. Frankenstein murmured with the driver and then stepped up himself.

When they had gained the privacy of the carriage, Ethan slumped down into the seat. His mind was still dull from passively awaiting his fate, and he didn’t understand what he’d agreed to. “Are you sure this is a good idea? How will Dorian cheat the hangman? I won’t have anyone else die for my crimes and Dorian, he is, well, special.”

Frankenstein raised an eyebrow but said nothing for a few moments.

“Where are you taking me? Won’t the coachman be suspicious?” Ethan asked of the streets that led neither to Sir Malcolm’s nor to the Gray residence, but to a seamier quarter.

Finally Dr. Frankenstein faced him with an exasperated noise.

“What Vanessa says has a habit of getting done, and even your Mr. Gray is in her power.” The doctor seemed to search for a reaction and then give up. “The real Mr. Gray assured me that his driver is on familiar terms with even the lowlier sides of the city. We have determined the best place for you to regain your true features tomorrow evening—whatever those may be.”

Then the doctor said archly, “I would have thought you and your visitor had plenty of time to discuss this. But from the looks of the clothes you left behind, you spent a goodly amount of time during your meal face-down on the table. How can you put fornication before asking the questions to save your own skin?”

Ethan sat watching London display herself with wanton squalor. He had no answer because he didn’t know. He had no idea why he craved the company of a man who was the opposite of his type—prone to witty artifice and games designed to spark the jaded appetite. For a while after coupling with the lithe aristocrat, Ethan always felt completely content, and he intended to hang on to that as long as possible.

His mind would eventually kick into gear and tell him he’d taken an experimental compound and left a friend with an appointment with death. Then he would think that he had no idea why his need to kill had resurged more violently than ever before, and certainly no idea if he would succumb next moon.

The cycle would answer some of these questions next evening.

“If you know everything then you know you should get me out of town as soon as possible,” Ethan murmured. They were already in the outskirts of the city.

“We are quite aware of your needs,” Dr. Frankenstein snapped. “Which is why it has been arranged for you to spend the full moon in one of Mr. Gray’s properties in Ealing. You will find the basement both secure and soundproof. You may howl all you like for the next three days. Mr. Gray is looking forward to seeing at least one of your transformations,” he finished drily.

“Seeing my—how quickly does he aim to escape from that fortress?” Ethan asked, still unable to see why Dorian would fare better before the hangman. His brain had been dulled by daydreams while in the stock, but now it ground painfully into gear once more. “I insist upon knowing every detail! I don’t deserve the assistance of such good friends as it is, but there are things you are not telling me. How do you know that my ‘last meal’ didn’t inspire the authorities to string up their prisoner tomorrow morning, as would be their custom? I demand to know the truth!”

Frankenstein smiled. It was the sort of expression that reassured Ethan that there was a kind of sensuality in that scientific skin. Ethan had seen it a few times, a type of delectation hiding around the doctor’s mouth as he discussed one of the monsters they gave him for dissection, or his theory for how a type of cholera acted upon the body.

“Dorian wished to show you himself when this was all sorted out, but I will tell him you pressed me on the subject. He will be hanging himself tonight if he hasn’t already. He smuggled in a cord and tackle very easily because no guard would dare pat down a gentleman, especially one wearing such a slim suit.”

Ethan lunged for the scientist and had the laughing man by the throat. “You all promised me he would not be harmed!”

The doctor began describing the strange condition affecting Mr. Gray, and the American with his own transformative ailment soon had no reason to keep throttling Victor. Frankenstein did tell an excellent tale when it came to science, and thus he was Ethan’s second choice for hearing theories about his friend’s ability to avoid death.

“Why didn’t he tell me himself?” Ethan asked, more hurt than he would have expected. He and Dorian had more in common than he realized. It made him wish they could have talked from their respective places astride the human-monster divide. No wonder it had always felt like more than just sex between them, Ethan mused. Dorian made him feel less lonely.

Ethan realized his companion was studying some emotional reaction in his borrowed face, and the passenger hastily stowed it away from the cold eyes of Frankenstein.

“I am not as intimately acquainted with Mr. Gray as you, Mr. Chandler, so I cannot provide a good answer. I suspect that he and Miss Vanessa had concocted some sort of plan for one monster to meet another after the regenerated Mr. Gray jumps out of the prison morgue and escapes. You see, he has escaped all manner of injuries, but no one wishes to put his abilities to the test before all the scientists who are clamoring for the right to extract your brain.”

Ethan listened vaguely to the doctor, who seemed not at all concerned about seeing if Dorian’s gift would indeed generate a new brain after the prisoner’s body was dissected for science.

Vanessa. Frankenstein had mentioned the close collusion between Dorian and Vanessa several times. The American felt a strong bond with the medium because she was another who existed at least partially in another realm. There was a spark between them that they had both treasured in silence, which made Ethan unsure why he was disturbed about her closeness with Mr. Gray, who had anyone and everyone he set his eyes on. As did Ethan, usually.

Not sure of whom he was jealous, he interrupted the doctor. “When will I see Vanessa?”

“She has worn herself out channeling the spirit world on your behalf,” Dr. Frankenstein said with something like respect. “She believes that your troubles do not end with those in this world. Miss Ives is resting now but would like to talk with you privately when you have returned to your humanity for another month. Vanessa believes that something about your case might help the concerns she and Sir Malcolm share.”

There was nothing left to say. Ethan was exhausted from all the tumult and new information. He wished only to sleep before he gave into his need to be a beast that night.

The carriage bounced along for what felt like forever. The false Englishman dozed while the doctor stared out of the window. Finally the vehicle stopped and Ethan allowed the driver to help him down before a small but comfortable house in a quiet, unassuming suburb.

Once the coachman had deposited the luggage inside he was dismissed. Ethan laughed at how much heavier the cases seemed to his thinner arms, and together the two men carried the food, candles, and a few changes of clothes down to the basement. While Ethan savored his first real bath in a month, Frankenstein busied himself with making the basement a decent home for both animal and man over the space of the next three days.

“You should have everything you need after I lock you in down there,” Victor was saying when he came across Ethan looking at his naked body before the full-length mirror.

“Where am ‘I’, if all of this is Dorian’s?” he asked in the English tones that were also borrowed.

“It’s a very interesting subject. I should very much like to experiment on the both of you, but we don’t expect there will be much time with Dorian engineering his escape. Sembene’s native potion is entirely untested except for variable results on mice. All he could bring himself to tell me was that it should last for ‘one sun.’ This means we don’t know whether the estimable Mr. Gray will regenerate himself as his own body or as you, if you see what I mean, Chandler. There is no small amount of risk in a new ‘Ripper’ trying to sneak out of the prison morgue. Should they catch him, the scientific community might be very interested indeed, and then even more so should they discover this body turns into Mr. Dorian Gray, and is impervious to all their autopsies.”

Ethan finished dressing his borrowed body with a tender kind of fear. After everything that had happened in the last few hours, he knew Ethan to be an even truer friend than the other misfits who had engineered his escape. He would take good care of this body for the remaining hours he was entrusted with it.

“Lock me in,” he ordered Frankenstein.

“It’s early morning. There’s no need. I was going to watch over you for at least a little while,” the doctor protested. “It would be my great privilege to watch your transformation,” he murmured with scientific salaciousness.

“Do whatever you want,” Ethan said dully. “I’m so very tired that I might well sleep until the moon rises. And since the end of ‘one sun’ will be right before, I will have just regained my own form and probably be more confused than normal, perhaps too confused to lock myself in. As you said about Dorian, we don’t know exactly what these two transformative processes will do during the brief period that they could interact.”

Dr. Frankenstein granted the other man a rare respectful nod. “Indeed. We are in uncharted territory here. That is why we should both rest, then, to be at our best when the events of this evening unfold.”

The two men went down to the basement, which had been fitted out for Ethan’s comfort. “There is human food and water, and I will be receiving a delivery from the local butcher so that there is something you will enjoy these three nights.”

The Ethan in his Dorian clothes lay down wearily upon the simple pallet. He had had much worse quarters, of course, but it felt strange subjecting the English gentleman in his care to this prison. It was even worse thinking of his friend in a real prison, tying his own noose.

\----

When Ethan woke up it was still in the slim Dorian body. He couldn’t tell very well from the dark basement how many minutes of sunlight might be left, but his instincts told him the moon was soon to rise on the other side of the shutters.

He carefully removed the fine clothing and sat there, waiting for the two transformations to render him the beast he was at heart. While he waited he hoped that Dorian had managed to escape without incident and was on his way to his fine home, or perhaps to this one.

The American smiled. Dorian loved games. Wouldn’t it be delightful if they’d managed to intersect here, in this private dungeon, so that they could cavort wearing each other’s bodies? That’s exactly the sort of dangerous pleasure the real Dorian would think of, Ethan realized. He wondered if that creative depravity existed somewhere in this borrowed flesh, because he was overcome by delightful fantasies.

Forgetting where he was and what he would soon become, Ethan stroked this assumed body into a climax all the more delightful because it didn’t feel like ‘his’ flesh or ‘his’ climax.

As he lay there panting, Ethan looked around and saw it was pitch dark. He felt around for the candles and sat there taking stock. Perhaps by ‘one sun’ Sembene meant exactly 24 hours after the time that they took the potion. One loses all sense of time in prison, so Dorian’s visit could very well have taken place after sundown.

For the first time in a while, Ethan was glad of his scheduled lunar transformation. He knew who he was as a wolf. Everything would feel normal soon. He could feel the sky rearranging itself behind stone walls.

He felt, rather than saw, the moon creeping over the horizon. The ecstasy flooded his body, which happened to still be Dorian’s at the moment. It was no matter: this change was about the animal overcoming any trace of humanity in him. The bones cracked and an exultant roar came out of his rapidly transforming throat.

In a few moments, Ethan was padding around as a wolf. His wolf-brain demanded to know why he was shut up in this small space. He paced and paced, looking around for something to eat. That’s when his hackles rose. Ethan’s instincts told him that something was wrong.

For no butcher’s delicacies had been delivered. Nor had Dr. Frankenstein come to watch the transformative process he was so eager to witness. Ethan wasn’t able to grasp all these details, of course, but one thing his animal mind did tell him was that he needed to escape.

The claws scratched at the walls. The throat howled. It took some time because of his rising panic, but the Ethan-wolf finally threw all its weight against the door.

It opened.

There was no human smell in the dark house that Ethan soon left behind. He regained his moonlit home with joy and ran off into the night.

At daybreak he returned to the house. There was still no one there. No word had arrived from any of his other friends, either. He felt, more than he believed, that Dorian had managed to escape from prison, and should be out of danger. Ethan knew his job was to wait out his moon cycle no matter what else happened, so he overcame his urge to send a telegram and kept a low profile during the days and then slipped out to run free during the nights. As far as Ethan could remember, he only indulged in a few sheep, several foxes and some chickens. Eventually, he would obtain the newspapers to prove that no more “Ripper”-style murders had been discovered in that sleepy neighborhood.

On the day after the third night, Ethan timidly walked up the steps to Dorian’s house in the city. He almost gave in to the impulse to knock when the door swung open.

“Good evening, sir,” the butler said less frostily than Ethan remembered from his visits wearing his own body. The servant appeared unsurprised at his grimy appearance, or his master’s unexplained absence. “I’ll tell Smithers to draw the bath.”

Of all the lives he could have gotten lost in, Ethan was thankful he was so easily absorbed by the coterie of servants whose only function was to anticipate his every need. He chose a scent Dorian would probably think appropriate for impersonating him and let it be added to his bathwater. Everything still felt slightly too large to his smaller hands and body, and he felt as though he could drown in the immense bath. What was most strange was that he didn’t want to die for the first time in a while.

Ethan had half-hoped to find the real Dorian in the wrong body waiting for him at this house where they had met up several times. The butler would recognize the big American and let him stay as a guest without question.

The interloper had a few questions. Why hadn’t Sembene’s potion worn off yet? Why had Dr. Frankenstein left him---with the door unlocked, no less? Where was the real Dorian Gray?

“Shall I refresh the bath, sir?” Smithers inquired from where he had been hovering behind a screen.

“No thank you.” He emerged wrapped in a silken robe and followed the servant to a dressing room where a vast number of garments were hung. He picked something very different than his usual style to make sure he was keeping up appearances and then smiled before his dandified reflection. Ethan ran his hands down his narrow contours, as if to confirm once more that he was this trim figure whom no one would instinctively fear, whom no one would expect to keep up the part of a ruffian he now found so exhausting.

“The guests will be arriving soon,” Smithers ventured.

“Guests? I had been hoping to go out on some urgent social calls.” Ethan was desperate to reach Sir Malcolm’s house and find out what they knew—Vanessa, especially.

“It is Thursday night, when your—salon—meets. Mr. Frawley is already here with his camera and is awaiting your instructions.”

Ethan held back a grin. Dorian had his servants so well trained that they only paused a fraction of a second when referring to the worst depravities. And Dorian had recounted these Thursday bacchanals in minute detail for Ethan, though the latter had not ever attended.

This was exactly the sort of enjoyment Dorian would want to share with the man sharing his flesh. Ethan decided to put off the reunion with his friends for a few hours.

He went down with some anticipation. He paid no attention to Dorian’s personal pornographer and took up a casual pose, watching the evening’s offerings arrive. The ladies were very fetching, but Ethan found himself curious about what it would feel like to be possessed by some of the larger men with him in a much less powerful body. The photographer must have seen him contemplating, because he pointed to some of the bigger male specimens and put them near to the master of ceremonies.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for something and finally one of the men made the first move, stroking Ethan’s thigh. He spread his legs a little, invitingly and the man studied him while divesting him of his jacket and then cautiously coming in for a kiss.

Ethan tilted his head back and received the lingual inquiry. Impatient for stimulation, he guided the big hand to caress his hips. In a moment, another set of hands was there unfastening his trousers. While these hands fondled his genitals, another set of hands was there with an aromatic oil. Ethan cried out in gratitude at the first set of fingers and then groaned at the first member to grace his borrowed channel. The fit was so tight that he felt thoroughly mastered.

He was aware of little except all the strong bodies passing him around, every man conquering him with member and then hand. Then a much-used Dorian was given to the women, who cooed demeaning names into his ear, praising his now accommodating orifice, some of the more sapphically inclined lapping as if at a woman’s aperture.

Ethan was in ecstasy. He had a considerable sensual repertoire, but he had never given up his own will to this extent. After all the indignities of prison he needed to be reassured and filled, needed to have his desires leave a mark upon his body. He needed to crawl before the stiff offerings and gobble them down one by one while the men and women jeered at him for ruining his own flesh by overindulging in slatternly appetites.

At the end of it all, Ethan was panting and he saw a flash from behind him.

“Your best portraits yet, I think.” Mr. Frawley, the photographer, licked his lips. “I’ll have the prints ready for you soon.”

Gradually the people drifted away and Ethan locked himself up in the bedroom to admire what his hidden desires looked like when risen to the flesh. He did get some enjoyment out of imagining his friend seeing the photographs of what use he’d put his body to in his absence.

A thought wound through his sated brain. “I should send a letter, a telegram, one of these servants over to Sir Malcolm’s. They don’t know that I’m all right, except for still not being me. Maybe Dorian’s not in this house because he’s over there receiving some reversal treatment from Dr. Frankenstein and Sembene. Except perhaps something has happened to the doctor. Vanessa always knows everything—I should speak to her at once.”

He was lying on the sumptuous bed surrounded by mirrors and realized he was still exploring this new body. Vanessa was always in touch with the spirit realm. She could keep watching until tomorrow. After all, it was very late to call upon the household and he was in no state of mind to have a sensible conversation.

“If Dorian is there, I might like to—“

The thought remained uncompleted as Ethan realized what he wanted now. He rummaged around in the carved bureaus. As he hoped, there were some instruments in a hidden drawer. They were all inadequate for his needs by this point, but that very fact pushed him into the best climax of the evening.

“Dorian doesn’t have as much experience in these matters as I would have thought,” Ethan murmured on the way to sleep. “I made this body into something even he wouldn’t have imagined.” Then he realized that Dorian, who had always been the aggressor in their relations, must have almost exclusively taken that role with his other partners. That must be why everyone sat frozen at first, and only gradually realized that their host wished to be passive on that evening. He couldn’t wait to show those photographs to the real owner of that body.

This insight was the final delight after an evening of delights. As Ethan slept on silk sheets, the group crowded around a Vanessa who flopped futilely in her own bedclothes.

“How can you see nothing?” a frazzled Sir Malcolm barked.

“Miss Vanessa sees only that which wants itself to be seen,” Sembene intoned.

Sir Malcolm strode out and slammed the door.

“There are too many things going on, Sembene. One thing I do know is that your remedy can’t be at fault. You and I transcribed the recipe from several of your ancestors and it was basically the same every time. None of Frankenstein’s test animals were transformed for so long.”

“When you open a door, it is sometimes not easy to close it,” the African said softly. “This I should have considered. It is a truth we both know well.”

“Something about Dorian has changed, beyond what our potion should have done,” Vanessa said. “I cannot find him, whereas I know Ethan is in Dorian’s home  and has had a very pleasant evening.” A smile furled around her lips. “But Dorian is simply gone, which for any other man would be disquieting, but for someone with his condition is simply unthinkable.”

“The doctor and I do not have very much in common,” Sembene said in a restrained voice. “But I wish you would listen when I say that his disappearance should concern us the most.”

“I’m tired,” the woman said and sank back on the bed. Her entire world had retracted into this rectangle of pillows and counterpanes since the two men had gotten stuck into each others’ bodies and all their plans had gotten tangled.

Sembene left her alone with the lamp turned down low. She consoled herself that if the new “Ripper” had been found come to life at the prison, Sir Malcolm’s sources would have heard about it. Besides, the press was blazing its headlines of “Ripper Found Hanged in Cell” all across the city, so one would think these rags would be the first to broadcast something as sensational as an immortal assassin.

Outside the city, Dorian ran.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian Gray is proving himself equal to a few unexpected developments. Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein is trying to regain control of his plans and finds some unexpected help. Ethan is deputized by Vanessa as the one with the second sight necessary to find Dorian.

Dorian dashed for a patch of trees edging the moor and paused to catch his breath.

He could feel his intuition tell him almost audibly to keep running, but he chose to stay very still so that he could sense the natural life around him. He ran a hand down the broad-chested man he was wearing at the moment and wondered once more how Chandler did anything at all with so much clamoring at him from some instinctual level.

Actually, Dorian had accomplished many things with this new form. When he woke up with the sheet over him while he was being wheeled on a gurney through some dank corridor, Dorian felt the bones in his throat begin to heal and his lungs take cautious sips of air. It was lucky he hadn’t thrashed around when he came to himself a few moments after hearing his own neck crack. Some inner wisdom commanded Dorian to still his limbs and breathe very little so as not to attract the attention of the ghoul who was conveying Ethan “The American Ripper” Chandler’s corpse to the scientist who’d won the brisk bidding for the privilege to dissect it.

Dorian knew not to be concerned about that, because Dr. Frankenstein and Sir Malcolm had assured them that they were the ones who would be receiving the body.

As the stretcher squeaked along, however, Dorian remembered Sembene helping him on with his coat after the last planning session with Vanessa.

“Miss Vanessa wished for me to tell you that she will have some helpful articles hidden near the pier in case the doctor’s plan does not prove possible,” Sir Malcolm’s batman said in his even tone of voice. “And she insists you tell no one what I have just said to you. Do you swear it?”

The servant’s eyes burned into Dorian’s, who had a hard time holding back his laugh. He’d never been part of a conspiracy unless you counted sneaking out of boarding school or smuggling liquor into the same. But these people were so earnest and yet they trusted each other not at all.

“Tell Miss Ives she need not fear for me, on any account. I swear,” he had told Sembene, and then thought no more about it.

Dorian was just wondering why that oath had come back to him when he scented a waft of fresh air through the sheet. Before he could even think he sprang off the table and had the surprised and rather spindly sawbone’s assistant pinned against one of the damp walls of the sewer. He knew it was where many of the most brilliant and deranged anatomists secreted their laboratories—where Malcolm had discovered Dr. Frankenstein, in fact. The fist knocked out the young man—really, more like a boy—as a precaution and then he was already running towards the fresh air he needed with all his being.

Something kept Dorian from bursting through the half-rotten hatch that promised fresh air on the street. He went very still and tried to guess from the sounds above where he might be in relation to the package Vanessa had so presciently left.

In the end, it was too dangerous to be cautious. Someone could come down the passage any minute. He peeked out, saw that the was still in the docks neighborhood not far from the prison, and decided there was nothing to do but move from shadow to shadow until he reached his goal.

The area was full of drunken sailors, opium fiends and immigrants, so Dorian hoped he didn’t stand out that much as he assumed an intoxicated manner and lurched towards the chink in a building that Sembene had described.

Clearing away some rubbish, he discovered a bundle of clothes. It turned out to be a sailor’s outfit in just the right size for Ethan’s body, a pair of scissors, a note wrapped around a fragile piece of rubber, a small mirror, a hollow, curved needle and two silver hoops, along with a sheaf of money.

“If you are reading this, then thank you, dear friend, for everything you have done for our equally dear friend in need. Affix this false scar with the spirit gum provided. Use the scissors to alter your hair as well as you can. The earrings are an extra touch should you wish. Hide yourself until the potion wears off and then come quickly to my bedside so that I can give you my thanks in person. Yours---.”

Dorian smiled at all this intrigue while he quickly found a dark corner where he had several times paid for a little pleasure. These flesh-merchants and their clients were the very dregs of the city, and thus too far gone to notice that he was just there to change his clothes.

Soon, Dorian felt confident he at least looked like a sailor, and hoped that the scar he stuck to his cheek looked like it belonged there. His hair was cut close to his skull, although without any hope of evenness. Then the ears were pierced with a pain that passed in a moment due to his healing powers.

The big man strode the streets as if he hadn’t a care in the world, which he didn’t. The effete Dorian Gray had hours in which to enjoy this strapping sailor’s body, and he intended to do so.

It was easy to find a barber that was too filthy to ask questions about his hacked-off hair, just as it was effortless for Dorian to feign a French accent that he hoped made him seem Quebecois. While the man sheared off the extra tufts, Dorian was beginning to feel the threat of physical danger that surrounded him like a cloud. The barber said nothing while avoiding eye contact, and then his customer nodded at the effect of the short hairstyle. The scar looked as thought it had been earned in some barroom brawl. Dorian smiled at the coarse features he had softened into passivity many times during his encounters with Ethan, and he handed over a note in payment.

With no more thoughts about being identified as the reincarnated Ripper, the brute for a day began seeking out new pleasures. The dissolute gentleman knew where to find any type of perversion at whatever hour, so he quickly made his way to the salon where the upper classes sought out entertainment. This place specialized in the larger, more dominant specimens of the lower classes.

“How much?” he asked as he always did at these dens. This time the madam looked him over with clothes on and then made him display what was in his trousers. Several jaded men and ladies stood by appraisingly.

“For you I’m willing to let you have two pounds each,” she said. “If they ask for extra, you’ll get extra.”

“Sounds fair,” the Canadian voice said as the interested parties came up to him. Dorian took them all. He positioned himself in front of the mirror and watched the rippling musculature and generous member reduce the men and women to whimpering, begging submission. It was an arousal like none other, seeing this big male form overpower all of these people, many of whom Dorian knew.

He fornicated for hours and then took a break. Some of his satisfied customers brought him the cheap ale they thought he would like. Dorian smiled at the offering and then induced them to bathe him, to sponge off his clothes. As expected, the subjugated gentlemen and ladies only craved more domination. They each took turns so that they could reverently soap off his sex. He refused their attempts to submerge his head or shave him so that the scar would stay in place, but a cleaner sailor was soon back in the clinch. He mastered two men with his splay-jointed hands while he filled the women and men all over again with the organ that felt so right.

“I’d not paid as much attention to this asset of Ethan’s because he was always so insistently offering his other charms,” Dorian thought while the last customers groaned in fulfillment. “But he should know he needn’t ever want for a livelihood.”

The day passed so pleasurably that Dorian had to force himself away. It wouldn’t do to have the potion wear off in this brothel, which could hush up anything besides one man becoming another before an audience.

Folding away his earnings with a smile, Ethan decided to begin walking towards Sir Malcolm’s. He noticed his body preferred the physical activity and open air, and that some of the larger men he passed were automatically sizing up the threat he posed. “Ethan and I will have so much fun now that I understand his world better—and know what he is equipped with,” Dorian considered. “There are so many things I want to know about his past. I fear my life would have little to offer him.”

But this little experiment had made Dorian a part of something real. He saved a man’s life, for one, and to accomplish this virtuous act he and Ethan had done something more intimate than the parlor perversions to which the gentleman was accustomed. He could almost feel Ethan in that house in Ealing Dorian kept for his most discreet affairs. He thought of the man about to become a wolf and felt a pang of dark sympathy for his burden.

Though he was close to Sir Malcolm’s abode and the dropping sun would soon wipe away their enchantment, Ethan turned around and pushed through the crowd.

He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he knew it had to be dark.

The change came upon him in the sewer some intuition had forced him into.

When the popping of his joints began, Dorian said a regretful goodbye to this big male frame.

When the cracking stopped, he thought nothing at all.

On four paws he raced through the tunnel, which smelled even more fetid to his new wolf-nose, but also much more interesting. Dorian chased the rats and caught a few, but he felt little confidence in this savage body. The rumbling of machines and the jabbering of the people he could feel from the street level, and the fear of these alien powers often froze him in his tracks. The urge to be out in the open air battled with his terror of the unnatural city, and Dorian was glad when he felt the moon withdraw its mastery over him. Naked and exhausted, he retraced his steps to the ruined clothing he’d burst out of.

“You must take off your clothing first or there will be none to come back to,” Dorian mused. There were so many things he’d like to ask Ethan about this condition, but here he was with no clothes and a wanted face.

Wait. Dorian looked down at the human form he’d just regained. He was still a big, murderous American.

Though he was naked and probably condemned to walk on all fours every month for the rest of his life, Dorian had smiled.

He was learning to trust these transmissions from some primal wisdom. He acquired provisional clothes without much difficulty by knocking out a similarly sized man who was already intoxicated, and then found another set of the sailor’s gear that made the most sense as a disguise. The false scar had been lost somewhere, but Dorian’s felt like some bestial tinge had clung to him, so he was confident he looked as dangerous as ever.

Then he bought a third-class ticket, as far as he could go before sundown. Dorian sat in the cramped seat with a hat over his face and his instincts finally allowed him a well-earned slumber, now that he was on his way out of the city and into real country dark.

Dorian Gray, late of the genteel class, dreamed of the savor of what he would soon identify as raw rabbit.

Ethan finally appeared at Sir Malcolm’s residence feeling very self-conscious of the dandy he was wearing.

“Mr. Chandler,” Sembene said, never missing a trick. “Yes, we are aware there has been some mishap.”

Sir Malcolm appeared. “Ethan, we are very grateful that you did not keep your appointment with the gallows.” He even clapped Ethan on the back, as if holding back some emotion.

“I didn’t deserve all of this fuss, but I am eternally grateful for what you all did for me,,” the English voice said. “But I have a lot of questions.”

“As do we, I’m afraid,” Sir Malcolm said. “Please, let us go up to Vanessa. She is very eager to see you.”

They entered the room and Ethan looked around, confused. “I thought Dorian would be here.”

“We’ve lost him temporarily, but I have no definite word of any tragedy,” Vanessa said. “Have you seen Dr. Frankenstein?”

“No,” Ethan said, sinking into the chair by her bed. “He was supposed to lock me in the basement, but when the moon had its way with me I found it was unlocked. By then I could have scented him a mile away, and he wasn’t there.” He touched his assumed face. “Why am I still Dorian?”

Vanessa ran her fingertips over Ethan’s borrowed features. “I can see you in there,” she whispered. “Someone like me, I could never mistake who a person is inside.”

“But—“

“Dear Ethan, you have not once inquired after Dorian’s safety. Yet I know you too well to think you are indifferent to his fate.”

Ethan reddened at this reference to his partiality for Dorian Gray. “I don’t know what we got into with this spell, but I’m simply not that worried about him. After all,” he grinned, “He’s wearing me, and I know I could take care of myself no matter what.”

Sir Malcolm cleared his throat from the doorway. “This unexpected duration of the potion is also the only thing that can help us find Dorian,” he declared. “You’re Ethan, but your form is Dorian. And vice versa. Vanessa and I were hoping that you would feel some connection to the body that is being worn by Dorian. Your body.”

“You’re the one gifted with the second sight in this case,” Vanessa said in an ironic tone from the bed. “Come here while I try to put you in a trance. I need you to listen to the ether, as I do, and try to sense where he might be.”

After so many strange occurrences in the last few days, Ethan went through the chanting and the divination rituals without question. Sir Malcolm fetched a map and Ethan cast colored stones, bits of wood and fortuneteller’s cards over it again and again. Then he was being equipped with a railway table. Ethan listened to the instructions from the businesslike Vanessa whose voice bore the echoes of the beyond.

She was undeniably the most fascinating person in London, as Dorian had said in a toast to Vanessa the night of the men’s first sexual encounter. At the time, Ethan had been unable to understand why that tribute irked him so, when he’d merely sought out this gentleman a way to distract from his tragedy with Brona.

The aristocrat stood up. “I wish Dorian had more practical clothing—this Savile Row suit  is the most ridiculous way to start a tracking expedition,” Ethan’s brain was saying. But some other, more obscure part of him was watching the inscrutable Vanessa, who was receiving medicinal drops after her exhausting session with the spirits.

Suddenly, her eyes cut over to his while her head was tipped back and she was in the act of receiving the medicine in her open gullet. It was like being looked at by a frighteningly wise, possibly evil, baby bird about to swallow a worm.

Vanessa smiled and the greenish liquid ran down the corner of her mouth. Her tongue flicked out and licked it up.

The shrunken Ethan beat a hasty retreat. It was as though the medium knew exactly what he was thinking while he wasn’t clear on his own thoughts at all. He forced himself to become a Pinkerton in mind once more. His old tracker self would have nothing but contempt for a man who was competing with a woman for the hothouse flower known as Dorian Grey.

By the time Ethan had claimed his first-class seat on the train, he had only begun to consider why he felt no worry about Dorian, while Sir Malcolm and Vanessa had sent him to find their friend with the utmost urgency.

\---

Victor Frankenstein was having a rather bad few days.

A man who could not die had slipped through his fingers. Dorian Grey’s condition could have been the subject of much enjoyable experimentation. From what he understood from Ethan, the undying Mr. Gray did feel the effects of intoxicants, so Victor had the most potent stupefacients ready in a new secret laboratory he’d set up for receiving the prisoner’s body. He had everything set from when it first occurred to him to turn this plan to rescue Ethan to the benefit of science.

Sir Malcolm had helped the doctor navigate the bidding among scientists with means—or the rich with a macabre curiosity—and together they had planned the handling of the suicide’s corpse to the last detail.

Little Horace. Dr. Frankenstein grimaced with sorrow that the boy had been hurt in Dorian’s escape. This former beggar he’d employed straight off the street to be his errand-boy, sentry, person who reminded him to eat, and then eventually, his assistant. Horace asked few questions because he was mute (a fascinating congenital deformity—Victor had examined the child in great detail) though Frankenstein had painstakingly taught the boy to read and write. He hated that the loyal Horace had been hurt when this plan went awry.

(Horace was one project that hadn’t become a monster, the doctor thought. At least, not yet.)

Dr. Frankenstein was too well known among the anatomists, and thus he would have been recognized in the hallways of the prison infirmary. So he had not protested very much when Vanessa insisted—with obvious sadism, it seemed to him—that the doctor should play Ethan’s lackey and then ensure that the wolf-to-be was locked securely in the Ealing basement.

Frankenstein felt a genuine pang at giving up the opportunity to watch a man become a beast. Well, he thought ruefully, he’d made several monsters, but none of his were quadrupedal.

But it was impossible to witness this transformation. For there was something the doctor needed more than an immortal specimen. Victor needed the American man-wolf to follow his native call out in the open air. To kill again, and this time be hanged for it. For Ethan, the great brute, would surely wring the good doctor’s neck once he found out about the reborn Brona and her new lover.

Externally, the resuscitated slut was close to perfect. She was a work of art, really, since all of her damage had been internal. There were no scars other than the ones she had collected during her lifetime at the hands of angry men. Tuberculosis was a savage illness, however, and it had taken all of the doctor’s artistry to mend or replace the organs that were eaten away by that corrosive force.

The other challenge had been the pudenda and internal female anatomy, which were rather the worse for wear. At least two clumsy abortions, some type of skin ailment—Dr. Frankenstein shuddered at the research this part of his labor had entailed. Some grafting and transplanting had been necessary, given that he wanted his peevish offspring to at last be satisfied with this bride. She, in turn, must satisfy Caliban for all eternity.

When he displayed his masterpiece to his son (the mouthy creature had finally worn away his sire’s objections and they now called each other father and son) Caliban had been initially admiring of the girl’s beauty. But Victor began to detect a type of disappointment in the hands tracing the inert form farther and farther down. Then a light came into the bridegroom’s eyes when he pulled back the sheet all the way. The fact that there were some imperfections and stitching, and that they were in this one place, seemed to excite Caliban.

“She’s exactly what I wanted, Father,” the thing said as if he were a child receiving the wagon of his dreams. Victor suppressed a memory of Horace scribbling his own excitement when the doctor gave the boy his first anatomical textbooks.

While Caliban’s fingers were examining more closely, his bride woke up. Without electricity—Frankenstein was fascinated at this unexpected return to life.

“Don’ stop what you were doing, unless you’d rather I show you how it’s done,” the girl said in that mishmash of a brogue she’d had in life.

“I didn’t, I mean, I’m sorry. My sweet, I hadn’t intended for us to meet this way, but I am so happy to call you mine,” Caliban said with that manner betraying him as a literary shut-in. (Victor vowed that he would never sound the same should he ever woo). His son pulled up the sheet once more. “I have some fine garments for you in our new home.”

“Give it to us quick, sweetie. I feel as though I haven’t had a good shag in months.”

The doctor withdrew to a corner of the laboratory while the two distinct styles of courtship struggled to some type of compromise. Technically, the bitch had never had a good shag. Frankenstein thought it wise to obtain unused parts to ensure greater durability. He watched the flummoxed Caliban uttering his long-practiced chivalries while Brona pushed him on the floor, mounted him without ceremony and, after a grunt, began consuming the phallic offering like a starving woman a crust of bread.

As with his the rest of his brood, Frankenstein noted that the memories from the girl’s life were scant, but there were definite personality traits that persisted after death. In fact, he began to wonder if they were only personality, and that was why their desires were so boisterous, their attributes so exaggerated (hence, Proteus, the impossibly pure and good, he thought, breaking his rule about remembering his favorite project).

His first-born was a conglomeration of many people but he had the brain of a clerk in a shipping firm. Why Caliban turned into the violent yet sentimental wretch that he was—it was beyond Frankenstein’s science. The doctor knew that Ethan saw something worth loving in the streetwise prostitute, but whatever this quality may have been, it did not seem to have made it across the void.

It would have been an interesting philosophical point, but this missing piece was of great practical import. The doctor was sure Ethan would not be pleased at the shrill, gluttonous trollop wearing the face of his lost love.

Caliban baptized his new bride Isolde, but since she couldn’t remember the foreign name she shortened it to Izzy and made an end of it. In this, as in many things, Frankenstein saw his firstborn’s disappointment. But a new carnal side was emerging in this erudite monster, and at first their father was gratified to note that they spent long hours in the hovel they’d made for themselves. This one experiment turned out well, Victor had dared to think, hoping to be shut of both abominations forever.

But soon, Izzy was jeering at her new husband’s fine manners, calling him not man enough for her when he couldn’t keep up with her insatiable appetites and, eventually, trying to escape to find other pleasures.

Neither father nor son had anticipated this pass. They cooperated for the first time in seeking ways to prevent an undead nymphomaniac from grabbing men off the street and copulating with them until she needed them no more. The two she had killed with her exertions mattered not so much as the few she let live to tell the tale. Some new variant of white slavers, was the rumor around the city. The papers advised wives to keep their husbands close.

Together, Victor and Caliban chained the newest member of their family, leaving a few implements of solace within her reach. Caliban made pitiful attempts to restart the fantasy he’d nurtured, but Izzy had no use for fine gowns or romantic poetry. He performed his marital duties with the clinking of manacles and either resignation or a kind of sublime, desperate desire that knew it would remain unfulfilled.

Victor was careful to hide it, but he was pleased that his son was sometimes tortured enough to stop blaming his scion for every sorrow in his freakish existence.

Then Horace had come to see him. The boy kept in touch with his old family of street urchins, and to them Victor’s assistant communicated the doctor’s interest in two men. The mute produced a clipping of the American Ripper, whose face was known to the entire nation, and then a newspaper photo of Mr. Dorian Gray at some fancy dress affair. This he repeated all over the lowest sections of town.

“My dear friend, I am so sorry that you were attacked,” Victor began.

The boy gestured him into silence and scribbled a note, “Mr. Gray was at his home for about a day. A big Canadian with a similar face made quite an impression at the brothels but hasn’t been seen since.”

“You have done very well. Better than I deserve,” the doctor said, ruffling the boy’s hair. “Here is some money. Distribute it to your accomplices and, especially, to yourself. Do I need to take over as the one reminding you to eat?”

He took the boy for fish and chips and wished Horace would allow him to find his apprentice a decent place to live. The urchin with a decent background in anatomy refused to stop living in the nests where the other match-sellers and beggars lived. Sometimes Frankenstein dreamed of finding a respectable place for himself, bringing Horace to live with him, getting the boy a real education of some sort. Experimenting together—he was getting uncharacteristically emotional at the idea when Horace slid his slate across the greasy table.

“Could they hurt you?” the chalk-written message said.

“I had thought only one was a threat, but now I am not sure if I should fear both,” he said softly.

“Fear nothing. I will take care of you,” Horace wrote.

They left the chip shop, each poised to return to his dark habits. Victor halted his young protégé. He couldn’t pinpoint why Dorian’s escape should bother him so. After all, the man had just skirted death—the doctor knew only too well that the brain can get a bit scrambled in the process.

But no matter which flesh he was wearing, the elegant Dorian Gray should not have been so efficient at seeking and finding his freedom.

“There are some specific things I want you to look for should you find those two. And then it is of the essence that I observe them myself. Alive.”

The boy listened carefully to the doctor’s instructions and laid a hand on his arm before he was lost in the crowd.

That night, Caliban came to see Victor in his laboratory. “Would you care to share your sorrows with one equally burdened? Victor? You seem more troubled than usual.”

Perhaps because the creature didn’t call him the obsequious “father,” the doctor broke his brown study. “I had one problem and one fantastic opportunity for research. Somehow they have both become fascinating experiments that may be extremely problematic.”

Caliban laid his hand on Victor’s. The fact that the doctor’s flinch was mirrored by the monster’s rejected jerk didn’t make them move away this time.

“Let me help you,” the monster said. “You’ve given me what I wanted and then helped me keep it trussed up.” They grimaced. “It’s only natural that husband and wife spend some time apart, isn’t it?”

Frankenstein barked out a short laugh. “Nature has little to do with our household,” he said. And then more thoughtfully: “I’ve spent a lifetime flouting it, but perhaps it’s time to spend some time studying nature—outside of Keats.” They smiled. “How would you like to accompany me on a journey?”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan and Dorian meet up in changed circumstances that produce both positive and uncertain dividends. They set off on a journey to a better life. Still, Ethan's past keeps closing in on him, with their London friends possessing more pieces of the puzzle than they have let on.

Ethan had nodded off on the train clutching the list of towns that Vanessa had pieced together with the help of her cards. Suddenly he awoke when their forward motion stilled.

“What’s happening?” he asked an employee dashing by.

“Damn gypsies,” the man said. “A whole herd of them decided to cross the tracks a little ways up, with no thought as to being struck or inconveniencing the timetable. You know how they are.”

The steward rushed on. Ethan didn’t really know about gypsies, but he wanted to. He regained his seat and watched the caravans heading east, along with some families on foot walking beside mule-drawn carts. Their distinctive clothing and arrogant air reminded him so strongly of Brona’s stories it hurt. He fetched his small rucksack and map-book of the English countryside and hopped off right as the train slowly heaved forward.

Ethan walked towards the next village, which he believed to be a few miles away. Everything was so much better in the open air, and walking down a dirt lane helped him chase the memory of Brona.

It’s not that she knew much more about gypsies than he did, but they shared a fascination for these nomadic folk.

“Any chance I could get in with them? Maybe travel with them for a spell?” he’d asked Brona.

“Get in with them? Ya don’t get in with gypsies, my lad. Either they pick you and carry you off without so much as a by your leave, or they think something’s the matter with ya if you try to join them,” she informed him.

They were lazing in their narrow bed, and she warmed to her subject. “I should know, sweet: my mother used to threaten that the Travellers would get me if I didn’t stay close to her and run straight home after school. Of course that got me curious.”

Here he ruffled her hair, knowing how she could latch on to an interest.

“And then I used to hang back on purpose when they were moving through town. They never did take me, sad to say. But I made a gypsy friend once, a girl who was left behind by her group so she could work as a kitchen maid in a fine house, all the while collecting information so her people could come by one day and steal them blind. She said I could never join them because I looked at people too close and I talked too much. Marks of the gaje,” she said. “Non-gypsy folk.”

“Well, you always say I don’t talk enough for your taste,” Ethan said into her neck. “And they remind me of some—people—I used to run with in America.” He thought of the gypsies he’d seen in London—eating anywhere, loving anywhere, stone-faced to the outsider but known for their passionate way of living. They were just like Indians, he’d always felt. They gave him a warm feeling of the only home he’d ever had.

“Well,” Brona considered him playfully, “You do have sort of a shifty look about you, my man, like I’m never really sure what you’re looking at, so that’s something in your favor. But,” she circled his shoulders, “you’re too much of a big oaf to be a gypsy.”

“I’ve seen some mighty large gypsies,” he said, surrounding her in his wide embrace.

“No, even if they’re big they’re graceful, because everyone knows a gypsy dances better than any creature.” She tangled her legs in his.

“My Brona, I’ve mastered every jig you’ve taught me. And I’ve told you I’ve been known to cut a rug very well in my American way.”

It was true. But his lover resumed her speech, because they both knew she was the impediment to the dancing they could only accomplish between coughs up in their room.

“And see, you could never pass for a gypsy.” Brona took his square hands. “They have fine hands made for stealing and reading cards and such.”

That day she continued her playful inventory of him until they forgot the reason for it. Several more such conversations dissuaded him from approaching these mysterious wayfarers. He followed her advice not to look too closely at them and thought no more about it.

After all, Brona was the one exception to his resolve to never get close to anyone. They’d set up housekeeping together, and he hadn’t done that since Brother Simon.

Ethan walked and wiped his brow under the midday sun. He saw another knot of caravans in the distance heading to all points other than his direction, west. He wondered what Brother Simon would say about Brona, because the hermit knew people better than anyone. Probably exactly what he himself had thought about this rare person who’d landed in his life.

The Irish girl had such a purity about her. Her education was incredibly spotty. She had no idea of geography outside of Britain and Ireland. So she made it up, like she filled in all the blanks in her existence.

It was the prostitute’s blessing and her curse to have been born with a tremendous imagination and a great sense of adventure while fated to live a small life. Brother Simon was very well read, and Ethan remembered several campfire chats in which the hermit talked about the transmigration of souls. Whether someone could live again and remember who they had been before. Whether those of us living in the modern day had, in fact, been around for many centuries—meeting, forgetting each other, trying again. The moments when we managed to reach each other shined out like gold, the brother said. It was one of the heathen conversations that made his companion think that Brother Simon wasn’t a Catholic at all, much less a Christian.

But Ethan was reminded of these strange theories while listening to Brona fantasize she was a princess, designer of fine clothes, a sailor on the high seas, with a level of detail that was startling from this girl who could barely read. He could clearly see that there was more to Brona than merely her squalid life, some eternal wisdom that blew through her at moments.

As her time drew to a close, Ethan would remember his mother talking to him before dying, the urge to explain it all. Brona would beg to hear some of his adventures, but then after he began, she was embroidering over the tale with her own flourishes until he was the one listening. To the very end this vibrant woman still knew how to enjoy things, to feel their true value. It was miraculous and too cruel that he, the ruined, jaded one, would live and she would die without ever having realized her dreams.

Ethan reached the village, which, like all English villages, reminded him of a doll’s house. He walked around the town, where there was another swarm of gypsies moving more lazily than those he’d first passed. He stood getting his bearings and imagined Brona was by his side. He pictured taking her with him on this this strange adventure instigated by Vanessa, and perhaps getting a ride with some gypsies. She talked far too much, he was thinking while looking for some place to eat. Not his Native friends nor a Traveller would have put up with Brona’s never-ending stream of talk for long.

A few knots of gypsies were half-heartedly begging and offering to tell fortunes in the square, and Ethan stopped to watch this scene he wished he could be sharing with the dead girl. A woman was dancing in a desultory way before a man playing a recorder. She was turning, the ribbons on her clothes and hair flying. Turning and turning. Then she stopped mid-turn. The look the dancer gave Ethan chilled him to his bones.

It reminded him of when Indians would look at him, knowing him for his true nature.

Feeling horribly naked in this borrowed body, Ethan studied the group even as they packed up and moved on. He stood there in the high street, watching the gypsy carts file away in the same direction where the bands he saw from the train had been headed. Not-west.

Everything came together very quickly in his mind, but instead of acting upon that knowledge he walked into a bakery, wanting to be sure of his next step.

Dorian wouldn’t know, he thought with a mouthful of sage roll. Dorian wouldn’t understand and he might be drawn to them, just as Ethan sometimes wished with all his heart to join a migratory society but knew better than to think he’d be welcomed. He chewed, at last understanding what this feeling was that had been haunting him since he got on the train. Since he took the potion in the prison. He was sensing Dorian.

Now that he understood what he was meant to do, Ethan walked in the opposite direction of the caravans for several days, picking up necessary articles as he found them and feeling more himself now that he was back to scavenging. Besides, his instincts told him that the purse he’d stocked with Dorian’s money might need to serve a higher purpose.

He acquired a workingman’s clothes, a jug of wine, some eggs, a blanket, a lantern and then a chisel he found at an abandoned worksite. The weapon made him feel more sure of himself—it was nerve-wracking to be so small with a well-heeled accent coming out of his mouth, but then again, perhaps his new, slim bohemian appearance would make people underestimate him. Still, all the time walking alone was also good to try and roughen the edges of Dorian’s high-toned accent, which marred the effect created by his dusty clothes. If anyone gave him a very hard time, he’d hint at being a poet escaping from his wealthy family, the tracker decided.

Ethan walked steadily, sometimes making an adjustment in his course, but always obeying the growing call deep within him—whether to his old body or to some other link he suspected with Dorian Gray, he couldn’t tell.

Late one night, Ethan did met up with his target. The latter was sitting alone under the lamplight in a gypsy caravan, the horse tied up nearby, with a couple of dead chickens his only company.

The two of them smiled as if this was a planned assignation there at the edge of the moor.

“It’s the strangest thing,” Ethan’s old voice said. “I know that I should do a thing, but I don’t always know why. I hoped to see you and compare notes about our situation—or situations, depending on how you look at it,” he grinned, “but once I’d stolen the chickens I realized you were on your way to me tonight, so here I sat. I’m not terribly good at cooking over a fire yet.”

The real Ethan set about making a fire with some of the cooking implements left by the vanished owner of the caravan. He prepared the meat effortlessly, the real Dorian paying close attention to his movements.

“Once I was talking to a girl in a shop before I realized I was there for the sausages and not her,” Dorian continued with a laugh. While the birds cooked he kept on gushing with enthusiasm about his wild new life, asking his companion questions about being a beast with a frankness that seemed out of place, given that they were talking about deadly nature. The longtime werewolf had certainly never talked about the subject in-depth with his old band, even the ones with the best English, Ethan was thinking. What he was, it was a mystery, and even Brother Simon approached the subject with reticence.

As they ate, Dorian related how he came to be the new owner of the caravan: “I’m finding that being shut up, even in a train, is no longer comfortable. Your body likes to be out taking its own course, my man, how do you stand London’s dirty air? But walking seemed too slow to your impatient bones, though I wasn’t sure where I was going. Then I noticed a few caravans coming toward the stream where I’d refreshed myself. They suddenly seemed the most fascinating creatures and a good way to travel. But do you know they took one look at me and headed off while making some primitive signs in my direction as if I were the devil himself!

“You’re a brute, that much I understand from the way people look at me now, but I suppose these gypsies are a mass of superstition. I stayed at this stream for some time, having heard it was a stopping point for wayfarers, but not one group would accept my offer of a bottle of wine in exchange for a little company. The last time, I tried to hop aboard to explain myself and they all left me this cart!”

Ethan listened. He felt wonderfully calmed feeling Dorian next to him, knowing that he was safe. Their shared wolf-knowledge wound them closer together. But his nerves were on high alert at the same time. He didn’t like seeing his face and the way Dorian was so simply taking it to be a vehicle of pleasure and adventure. Everything came with a cost, and the ebullient face asking about the finer points of stealing was the one that had caused so much darkness in the world and still graced every newspaper in England.

“You’re troubled. You can’t hide it from me now. There’s too much of you in me for you to pretend,” Dorian broke off, winding his big hand in the smaller man’s hair and then beginning to work down his spine, knob by knob.

Once he turned away from the face, Ethan liked feeling the strong hands that knew exactly what he needed. Hearing the rough voice that told him to take what he needed.

Dorian pulled him inside the wagon and retrieved something from the caravan’s small pantry and placed it on the bed. He then fixed Ethan’s eyes with his own while he unfastened his own trousers.

“Ready yourself,” he barked.

Ethan noted that Dorian seemed to have no problem looking at his real body that he had every intention to mate with momentarily. The now-smaller Ethan felt a shiver of wrongful anticipation at being more thoroughly mastered by this larger Dorian than they could ever manage before. He positioned his borrowed form just so in the lamplight and moistened himself slowly, thoroughly. While his hands worked he recounted some of the blasphemies he’d put this body through during the salon at Dorian’s house.

“You should have seen what I, I mean you, looked like that night,” he said to his appreciative listener. “You were quite ruined. I hope you see the pictures someday. Mr. Frawley was falling all over himself to document my destruction at so many men’s hands.”

Dorian had crept forward and pushed the hands away. “I can still tell. This is my body, you know. You are notably more receptive. And from what I have learned about your body, it has the means to work upon another’s until it will be of no use to anyone for the next few days.”

The moan came out of Ethan’s higher, more delicate voice, and it was only the first. He was covered by this heavy, muscular body bent on destroying his frail receptivity, and these subservient vocal responses sounded so right for the moment.

The big man gave orders, crooned coarse words into the ear, and pushed the bones apart up to, but not further than their capabilities. It was the body he knew best, after all. This knowledge made Ethan feel completely safe with this man whose face was outside the circle of lamplight. He knows me, he knows me, was the only thought left in the mind that was very much his own as Ethan shared years’ worth of pent-up love.

The caravan was lurching on its hinges with their efforts. Ethan cried out in the moment of truth. He had long been wanting to love Dorian. It was the Dorian who knew his tastes now filling him completely with what could only be Dorian’s member.

The big man rested. “Are you satisfied, my angel?” Dorian saw Ethan react to the rather demeaning word and it gave them both another charge of arousal. Dorian tipped the face towards him to see—Ethan’s lust spread over Dorian Gray’s features. He’d been studying this profane mosaic throughout this delightful experience.

Dorian brought over the lamp, not because he needed to verify the other man’s need, but to show Ethan it could never be hidden from him. “I know that look too well, my greedy cherub. What can I do to relieve you?”

One small hand began leading the way. Ethan showed his current capacity and then slowly made himself more available, open in his emptiness. Dorian was enjoying the novel use his old body was being put to. A big hand pushed the slender ones away. They probed the diameter quickly, brutally, and then began to retake possession of this body that had once been his.

“Does that please the gentleman? Is my dandy getting more than he bargained for?” The higher voice was crying out into the pillow in response.

“I’ll school you in what you’re good for. The master will serve me on his knees or however I like, whenever I like, from now on.”

The prospect of a future with this man, who he could feel pulsing like a second heart inside his flesh, one like him, one that was his—Ethan could never have believed such a miracle could happen to him twice. It dilated him to his utmost possibility, and he writhed and shuddered for some minutes at the knowledge that he was not alone anymore.

“I would never have thought that would be so easy,” Dorian observed, playing with the now-changed contours on his old body. “I suppose a long session at the other end of this had something to do with it.” He wielded the sex as if it had always been attached to him.

The slim body with its soft skin wound itself around its opposite, and the English mouth kissed the length of skin in gratitude. Then Ethan grinned. “A lad I met once told me it was ‘aspirational.’”

They chuckled.

“But the night of your salon,” Ethan continued, “When I understood your inexperience in certain areas, I saw taking every fine, strong man in the room as my aspiration. I wanted to give you a new experience—one that was very enjoyable, as everyone could tell. I’m afraid your reputation is quite changed forever.”

The ruffian’s body stretched out and took a quaff of the last of their humble wine. Dorian seemed unconcerned about all of London taking him for a wench and a floozy. Just as Dorian hadn’t exhibited a single care during their night together.

Not once had Dorian asked why they were still in each other’s bodies, nor had he asked how to reverse the process. He’d merely said that exchanging forms must have had the unintended effect of passing on Ethan’s blood-curse, and then gone straight on to planning their next moonlight romp together.

It must be removing himself from his old arid world of rote seduction, Ethan thought. With the gift of a little strength, Dorian Gray was full of plans on how to use it.

Ethan, the slim figure worn out from that same oaf’s attentions, was the one who watched his lover in his sleep, chasing some thoughts that were his alone to assemble.

Was he so happily ignorant when Silver Bow claimed him? (He thought now of Brona’s tales of people being snatched up by the gypsies as the literal truth, like what happened to him with the Indians). At the time, Ethan Chandler had had all of Silver Bow’s expertise showing him the way to survive. And especially, the way to love. They’d had a much more forgiving tract of wilderness to get lost in. He had no idea how many gypsies were in these parts, but he imagined there were quite a few seen all together, which they usually weren’t.

His fingertips stroked the hairy thigh thrown over him. He knew Native folk had their methods of communicating—signs carved in trees to warn the unwary of a hidden ravine or fouled stream. England’s gypsies could telegram and would all know soon enough that there was an unnatural creature in their midst.

The nomads in these parts must have held on to some myth giving them knowledge of the wolf-man who chased humans under the aegis of the moon. There was no other explanation. The gypsy’s stare in the village had been exactly like the way Indian tribes had looked at Ethan when they crossed paths.

When he passed them in the hubbub of London, near the docks, Ethan could have been going to or from anywhere, just like the gypsies he’d seen. No one accosted him when he’d been following Brona’s direction to avoid eye contact. But the new, instinctual Dorian had had the impulse to try and fall in with them, and they took this as an assault upon their people specifically. He remembered the Indians looking at him askance when he tried to follow them in Santa Fe, and felt the mass exodus was only fair.

The thought came to him that he should try to communicate to Vanessa about Dorian’s changed state. His new half-wolf condition must have changed him so utterly that this explained why the all-knowing Miss Ives couldn’t find him using any of her ethereal sources.

Finally, Ethan decided to give in to the warmth and security that could be his this night and perhaps for much longer. He didn’t know if having a wolf companion would help him resist the temptation to murder another human in the next moon cycle, but for right now, sleeping with, pleasing, running alongside Dorian would be like being whole again.

He had enough time to figure out where they should arrange to be when the change came upon them. The wilds of Scotland, most likely. Or Ireland. They had enough difficulties to occupy them the next island over. So many times Brona had described her home, coming to love in memory the place that treated her as very little. They would go to Ireland, Ethan decided then.

With Dorian’s purse they could go farther than that, of course, but that would take planning, given their lunar schedule and desire not to be found. Soon, soon. He might be wearing the body of a hothouse flower at the moment, but Ethan belonged in the wild. The farther they got from London and into the open air, the more clearly he could think.

The last thoughts that barely bubbled to his mind’s surface were: how was Ethan going to retrieve his body from Dorian Gray, who was enjoying it so much? This odd situation couldn’t go on forever, and they would be so much safer with an Ethan who had all of his faculties to protect them.

Ethan Chandler finally had something to protect.

The two men began their careful journey the next day, and Ethan kept up his silent thoughts. Since Dorian had often teased the American for his taciturn ways, the new, even more talkative Dorian seemed to accept that the real Ethan was always quiet.

There was a lot to think about. Traveling with someone who knew no fear of death could be quite a liability, given that the Englishman had never had to fend for himself in any way. The experienced outdoorsman had to constantly watch his big, erratic companion, lest he do something foolish and attract attention from any number of parties, most especially, anyone that would recognize the American Ripper.

The navigator found reason to delay contacting Vanessa. It would be more advisable to telegram when they were in an in-between place so as not to betray their destination, but close enough that they would cross the water and be lost in a new island soon enough. Dorian had to sit in the back during the day to reduce the likelihood of being seen. They also drove at night, which when Ethan instructed his friend in the fine art of horse stealing, another skill learned from his old band. The gentleman was an avid, if intemperate, student in all subjects save one.

When they stopped and lit a fire to roast the small game Dorian was getting better at shooting, they were alone in a forgiving darkness. Then, Ethan did everything his mate asked of him, no matter how debasing or strange, because he wanted to drink this brief period of their new life to the dregs, and then whatever came after that. And afterwards, Ethan felt so much contentment he could burst.

Finally. Peace. He deserved it after a lonely and brutal life. The broad arms belonged to a man who knew about him and was not repulsed. Ethan had had long hours in prison to repent of being a monster, of tearing people apart with some new compulsion in the last year or so.

Before, a sheep would do as well as a man to satisfy the urge to rend, and only the sheep could be a meal. Men were not palatable—Silver Bow instructed him in that. They were the ultimate sport, but one only indulged in occasionally so as not to attract attention. When their pack descended upon unwary campers they were asserting the balance of things, rejecting their former humanity. Then they ate elsewhere.

But Ethan alone felt responsible for his recent degeneration and the taste for human blood. For there was a grace within Silver Bow, something he couldn’t see in his own recent kills. Mercifully, as he and Dorian grew closer, Ethan could scarcely remember these blears of terror he had inflicted on two continents.

Right now, he felt far from any such need. He looked forward to running with Dorian when the moon rose the next week, to showing him how to be wild. The objects of their kills would be incidental to the need to hunt.

“I don’t want to merely eat chickens and rabbits. Let’s try to find a fox! I wonder if badgers would be good to eat,” Dorian mused, always the gourmand.

His quiet companion knew what one left behind when humanity became conditional. But now it meant all the more to have someone willing to shoulder that burden, to look into the darkness without flinching.

That night, Ethan pressed backwards and felt the strong stubbled jaw scrape against his cheek. It was going to be all right. He would make sure it would be all right this time.

He rested but with his mind alert, and then in the early morning decided to check on the horse. He brought it a pail of the last of their water and wished he’d been able to convince Dorian to stop yesterday so they could obtain some hay. Soon the inexperienced gentleman would gain some survival skills of his own and then they would be safe.

In a little while, Dorian joined him for an early breakfast after a jog around the heath to prepare for a long day in the caravan. Ethan was gathering their belongings as the sun came up and he felt heat on one side of his face. He had hoped all these hours sitting in the driver’s box baking in the sun would help his borrowed face to become a more humble brown very soon, but Dorian’s skin was staying stubbornly creamy and rarefied.

His mate liked to tease Ethan about it. “Are you sure you are not using some cosmetic? My complexion was never so dewy and pure,” the sweaty brute said after his exercise. “I swear you get more covetous looks than I ever did, from ladies, gentlemen, and some in lower circles than that, my beauty.” His paw descended to a sensitive spot. “I have to let people know I pose a threat, or I’d have to actually fight off all who’d try to steal what’s mine.”

“Things look different from the other side,” snapped Ethan while wriggling out of Dorian’s grasp. “I never knew myself to be such a lumbering ox. Good thing you can heal yourself, because you hit your fingers instead of a nail 19 times out of 20. And I’ve never used my size to intimidate anyone for a commodity that I could steal perfectly well instead.”

Dorian had hit a sore spot. Ethan’s least favorite thing about their situation was how people sized up his inexperienced but large companion as the threat and the smaller man as a weakling. Ethan Chandler might be in somewhat reduced quarters, but he had forgotten none of his skill at fighting or firearms, as some interlopers had been surprised to discover.

“Ah come now, my poppet, don’t be that way. You’re my favorite plaything, is what I mean. Does that not please you? I know it does,” Dorian said, noting the avid look the other man gave to what was emerging from his trousers.

“We need to get on,” Ethan said, kicking dirt over their fire. “It would be better to make the crossing at Liverpool before the moon, but if not we can manage.”

They drove on through the human civilization that was growing up around them. “You’re always very pouty when you’re in the middle of a city. I had always thought that was your nature,” Dorian said, trying to cheer up his morose companion. “But the city has its pleasures, let’s not forget. Perhaps filthy Liverpool will grant us a few distractions, for I assure you Ireland will have fewer. A land ruled by violent, drunken Papists with no use for men who use each other? A cherub like you would appeal to many men with a pious and repressed heart. I must mark you well before we arrive,” the American lout said with a possessive squeeze.

The narrow back stiffened under the touch and Dorian withdrew in defeat.

Of course the influx of people bothered Ethan. Of course he was worried that they would soon have to abandon the caravan and travel without its cover.

But Dorian was every bit as thick as Ethan had always taken the narcissistic fop to be.

They had many of the ingredients of a happy life together, but the reshuffling of their attributes had left one imbalance intact. Dorian had never known love.

Ethan lay awake at night feeling some wind wafting through this absence, as it never did with Silver Bow. Certainly, the now-smaller man threw himself into every perversion—because what was such a concept to one who had attained the country of love? He could only give all of himself and keep Dorian very satisfied while the big man learned how to love by rote, as he had learned how to steal.

This was the real reason why Ethan wanted no contact with Vanessa. She would know that Dorian was unchanged at heart, as she had understood Ethan’s feelings before he did. Let the medium gossip about Ethan’s unrequited affections with her friends in the ether. This was his second lease on life and love, and as soon as they put some water between them and the bad memories of England, they were going to be all right.

\-----

The tomahawk whizzed by Snake’s ear and embedded itself in a tree. It was the only way to stop this, this _talking_ , and with it the developing closeness that all the Indians had noticed for a while.

The band was occupied with some usual before-dinner preparations, but in a moment, every sound had ceased except the crackling fire.

Their leader strode forward, ignoring the man with blood gushing from his ear and the rest of the nervous individuals frozen in place.

She caught Ethan by the shoulder and threw him to the ground.

“No! Stop!” The white man was sawing the air with his hands while his mouth was making those sounds that his mate would never master.

The chief knew truth, however, and he would make his white man understand it, as well. Silver Bow unfastened his leggings and withdrew what lived underneath. She was pleased that her mate sunk to his knees as if he had lost his own will. The pale man crouched there as if mesmerized by this appendage he knew very well, and then at a gesture from the leader he raised to his knees, his mouth opened and the hot length was disappearing into his throat.

While his pleasure built, the leader looked around to his pack, that they might each understand this lesson. Normally, the 10 couples and few assorted individuals existed in a strict privacy. A pair kept to themselves, with the separations accentuated by the different languages and customs within the group. Silver Bow expected some members to primarily take care of the hearth, food and shelter, while others concentrated more on the hunt, but she cared not what under-parts these people possessed, as he could be either if the need arose.

There was little chatter in the camp aside from with one’s partner. When he found his own white mate, Silver Bow had noticed from the outset that the newcomer seemed uncomfortable with the silence between the two of them. Whenever her man found an English word they shared, or managed to impart a new one, he made a cry of triumph.

Silver Bow tried to bend his mind to these assignments, but why should she contort her mouth or strain her ears when she simply did know her mate, and her mate knew her? The man answered to the name “Mine” in several languages, including his own—what more needed to be said?

The head Indian had been watching the conversations between Snake and his lover for some time. Even if that cunning Ojibwe with his fancy talk didn’t have designs upon his partner, Silver Bow couldn’t allow the rest of the band to see their leader proved an inadequate partner. There, with the entire pack assembled, with every stroke Silver Bow communicated the truth: that no leader would allow his consort to publicly advertise that their relationship was in any way unsatisfactory.

While Silver Bow watched the mouth he had trained do its work flawlessly, the Indian relied upon a purity of thought that would never be distorted by language:

“Mine, I know you gave up something when I took you. But I have given you everything I have, and you have done well. When the wolves came to take me as a child, I thrived. I forgot how to walk on two legs. I ran so well that I was usually at the front of the pack, ready to be the first to approach our prey, so delicate was my step, they said. For my brothers and sisters and I communicated constantly, never better than when our muzzles were silent and we spoke with a curl of a lip, the barest ripple of fur along the back, or the scent of fear or exaltation secreted in our musk.

“What you do not know is that I never wanted to leave them. And then one day, the leader said to me in the ancient way, ‘You who we have taken for our own, you were born strong and you have become stronger with your true kin. You are a leader, and no pack can have two leaders. The others already look to you too much, but I have come to think of you as my own child and do not wish to kill you. Go off and find your own pack, and if our paths cross again, we will greet each other from the head of our own clans.’”

Silver Bow had cupped Mine’s jaw in his hand while his mouth labored, wishing to transmit his thoughts clearly. “I wished to die when my clan cast me out. I lay in the forest and waited for the full moon so I could track my kinsmen again with the best of my senses. For though I can always sense the movement of a wing before the bird has even decided to take flight, I was still not as perfect as the rest of the beasts when the moon was not with me.

“But as the head wolf had said, my will to live was strong. While I waited for my full wisdom to return I scented humans, and human food. I crouched in a shadow and watched their ways. They were not me and I was not them, but I was curious.

“I had become accustomed to wearing an apron of skins tucked around my lower parts to make up for my lack of the fur that protected my fellows from brambles as we galloped through the nights. My hands and feet were then even harder than they are now from running, so they never got cold. And when it was very cold I would steal a blanket when the warmth of my wolf family was not enough. But this was a warm night, and I couldn’t understand why all these creatures were so covered up. I myself had fashioned a sort of sunscreen out of boughs to protect me from the worst of the sun.

“Wondering like this, one of the women found me there, a youth shivering and dirty, looking at the campfire with hunger.

“The woman made strange sounds with her mouth, unlike anything I had ever heard. We stared at each other and then she beckoned me towards the fire.

“A cry went up around the camp and they brought me into their circle. They seemed very unhappy at my lean torso once they induced me to move aside my leafy garment. One woman made a motion to remove my coverings, but I scuttled away, not wanting to mate with these strange beasts. In the end they induced me to wash the parts of my body they could see.

“They thought I was a girl, as many have, even as you did, Mine, and they gave me a woman’s dress to wear. Then they watched me eat a bowl of soup, first with my hands scooping up the bits of meat and then immersing my mouth in the broth. You know that I find utensils and things strange even today.” She remembered watching her mate eat with a spoon on their first meeting and smiled.

“The people were kind. They helped me spend more time standing straight up, this being a posture I assumed only rarely with the wolves, and then taught me to walk that way. They chattered at me and let me sleep by their fire, for I could not get used to a tent. When I wept in the night for my lost family they did not understand that it was a family of beasts.

“When my time came I could not kill them. This emotion was something I had never encountered, and I ran far away so that no temptation would overcome me. I even buried the dress they gave me in a safe place so that I could recover it when my time had passed. It was the first occasion when I walked on four legs only one night of my moon time. For the other two nights I sat on a hillside, half-covered with fur, and looked at the open sky with the first question I may have ever asked. Where did I belong?

“Soon, I became better at walking upright and wearing clothes. I could survive perfectly well on my own, but I was lonely. I was looking for my own pack, as the head wolf told me to do. Where would I find others like me?

“In time I saw others of our kind, often in towns looking at all the people, looking for someone so they would not be alone. We started to run together, and we traveled elsewhere looking for others. Sometimes Indians sent their children to us, the ones who have been touched. For reasons no one understood, the wolves would come to a village and nip at a child, just one, marking it for nature’s purposes.

“Once, a wolf pack told me in the ancient way that there was another about to die of loneliness on the other side of the ridge. That is the greatest threat to our special breed, Mine. Loneliness. An animal will not die of it but a creature such as we can sit down on a trail and go no further, dying right there, no longer able to bear the absence of someone else.

“At last I had my own pack, but still, when I found you I was about to lie down and move no more without a mate.

“I took you and I made you Mine. Is it not a great thing I have given you? You could leave at any time, but you have not.”

Silver Bow felt a moment of hesitation as he looked at the eyes watching the scene. He knew some doubted that Mine was really one of them. The leader sometimes went off for long treks just to wait for Mine to follow, overcome with need, or else she would creep back to observe the white man and see if her lover truly worried.

But the connection between them was real. It must be, because as if sensing his mate’s disquiet, the white man’s eyes looked up from where he had been receiving his sensual punishment. He moved his mouth slightly away and licked in the way that was sure to please. Once, twice, again, with his eager tongue.

“Mine,” Silver Bow gasped in as many languages as he knew. “Mine.”

The explosion hit Mine full in the face. The leader drew him up and licked her mate’s face the way she did when he was hurt or after they made love. Then Silver Bow reached into a rarely visited part of himself and strung together some sounds in the language that most belonged to him. He intoned the syllables for the rest of the group to hear.

“He Brought Happiness,” one of the watching members said to the white man who was now standing within Silver Bow’s arms. “This is your name.”

Silver Bow tried to repeat the English version several times and stumbled. He-Brought-Happiness didn’t have very much luck with the original, either. At the suggestion of one of the others, they each managed to say “Happiness” in several languages. They smiled.

The leader put a slim, iron-strong arm around her mate and said in English, “Happiness. He stay.”

The group emitted celebratory grunts as he led Happiness away for a more thorough claiming while the others hummed or beat pots outside. When they were before the others, the two were moving carefully as if weighted down by the truth of their actions. But inside the tent, the mates laughed as they rolled around in their shared life. When they emerged, Silver Bow held up Happiness’ hand and there was a cheer.

Though they could not speak about it, in their new, bonded state the mates simply knew that they had walked into new territory together. The members of their band stayed a step back, not wishing to interfere with the married couple, and not needing to say anything about the proof that the two were enough for each other.

One night, Happiness brought Silver Bow outside the tent so they could enjoy the night air. Laboriously, his mate uttered several words.

“Now. Happy.” Then she gestured behind her as if to the past. “Then—one.” She pointed at herself and hung her head. “Now.” She put an arm around her mate. “One. You. Here.” She cast her arm far in front of them. “There. Always.”

Sembene finished reading out his notes. “That is all we have in our records, Sir Malcolm.”

“Sheer repetition of a touching marriage ceremony will not get us any closer to our goal,” a clothed and composed Vanessa said. “Unless there is a portion you want me to reenact? I saw it all quite clearly from the Indian’s perspective.”

Seeing Vanessa thrusting her pelvis into midair had been one time too many for Sir Malcolm. He threw himself out of the chair and began pacing restlessly through the room. “You say that once a spirit latches on to you, it is frightfully difficult to make them disengage. Given the many dark forces I’ve seen nearly destroy you, Vanessa, I would have had to believe you did not exercise your free will in saying some of the monstrosities you have uttered. But now for the first time you are not connecting, not now when we need it most. I am forced to consider whether you yourself wanted to call me a ‘mealy-mouthed exploiter’ or a ‘buffoon of the devil’ or my favorite, ‘a limp-pricked voyeur’—“

“I plead guilty to uttering the first of my own power in a fit of pique, but the rest you should blame on my visitors,” Vanessa admitted.

“Now tell me, Sir Malcolm, why I would be trying to call this spirit using every trick I know if I didn’t truly want him to speak through me? If I could truly learn something through this Indian that could help us contact Mina I would keep trying. This spirit seems to be cloaking two men’s astral presences, changing them in some important way. Mina also appears to me as if through a glass darkly, and she also has strong opinions about what happens to us. It’s the best clue we have so far. ”

Sembene spoke up, “We do not know if this spirit has the same power over Ethan as your daughter does over you and Miss Ives. There is an interference, yes. But Mina may be trapped in another world, as you originally thought. This Indian may be merely dead.”

“The omens are the same, Sembene,” Sir Malcolm said tiredly. “Or did we both dream of wrestling a Red Indian away from Vanessa on two occasions, much like Mina or her emissaries have appeared in the flesh? In either case, they have business with us. This is an entity on such an urgent mission that it can assume a body, or a person who never abandoned their mortal form entirely.” He threw up his hands. “Ask the servants; they’ve scrubbed off the hieroglyphics, both Egyptian and Indian varieties, that have appeared drawn in colored clay upon these walls.”

“Ssh, Sembene knows. He had the painters and once he did it himself,” Vanessa chided. “We are all three pledged to help Ethan, and at the very least we have helped him out of the noose.”

“I still think we should have told him what was coming for him,” the African said. “I’d like to know, if my dead were coming for me.” He stared at the wall morosely.

Vanessa poured a cup of tea and handed it to Sir Malcolm, who set it before his batman. The explorer spoke: “Sembene, you have acclimated marvelously well to London. Within a month you could set a table for a formal meal with your eyes closed. But you don’t know Americans. I traveled with a few in Africa, and even you have seen missionaries in all their fervor. A self-hatred that has been called god is something that once it gets inside you, it doesn’t easily come out.”

“This Indian is not a missionary,” the other man muttered.

“No, but if we’d told our American friend that there is something from the beyond that has designs upon him, he would have taken it as yet another sign to give in to an inevitable horrific fate, the one drummed into him by his father. That part of Ethan’s past is abundantly clear. He expects only the worst.”

Sir Malcolm saw Vanessa nod and he pointed to her. “She’s the one who relived his past. Vanessa can tell you that Ethan is accustomed to the sensation of running from something without questioning what that pursuer is. In this case, given that the threat is perhaps the one man he ever trusted, the specificity would have finished him.”

They sat drinking tea in silence. What Vanessa didn’t wish to tell her two friends was that Ethan himself was now fading from her circle of awareness. She knew they had been heading west until Ethan had faded into the same astral blankness as had come over Dorian.

She was confused about where her allegiances lay, but she had enough real affection for Ethan-the-good-hearted, Ethan the one trying to love, that she did not wish to cut short his path to what was undoubtedly Ireland. Not yet. Let him have his chance, she thought. Like Mina, this is a war that will be won by more subtle methods. The ones in which she excelled.

Vanessa smiled into her teacup.

“You have sent trustworthy men all throughout the city and can find Dr. Frankenstein nowhere?” Sembene was saying to Sir Malcolm.

“No. And that suits me very ill, because we need him to create the antidote to this potion that started it all, and perhaps have him create a modified version that will help me in my quest,” Sir Malcolm amended. “I am willing to become another for a short time if it puts me in communication with the forces trying to destroy me. We simply have to figure out who that person is.”

“The doctor knows the secret that the Ripper is still alive. And many more of our secrets besides,” the still-glum Sembene said. “You all think I did not like him because he was cross with me, but a trustworthy man would not run away just now.”

The two men fell silent. The woman arose.

“At the very least, my uncooperative spirits mean I have the energy to leave my bed and dress myself,” Vanessa announced. “I’m going out. You have no idea how the world can seem new when you’ve been kept out of it for a while.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Victor Frankenstein and Sir Malcolm are converging on Ethan and Dorian before the two lovers can make their escape. Ethan allows himself to become distracted when he finds out the truth behind Dorian's personality change.

Victor Frankenstein was pacing around the undercellar that his two progeny called home when Caliban returned.

“No ideas, Victor?” the monster asked sympathetically. He set some food on the table and then emptied a large sum of money from his pockets. “Please eat something and then look at how much money we have to finance our excursion. They’re fresh.”

The scientist sat down and poked at the still-warm rolls that Caliban must have stolen from a bakery’s early-morning batch. His creations required no food, but his eldest must have noticed the day-old scavengings were less palatable to the frustrated doctor. Frankenstein took a polite mouthful.

“I have plenty of ideas for what I would do with these two singular creatures but no idea of where they are. For all I know they’re on their way to me. I’d much rather take them by surprise than vice versa,” he said and chewed glumly for a moment. “There is no way that a libertine and a beast could hide themselves without any incident. Neither Ethan nor Dorian is at all temperate.”

“If I thought I could travel discreetly by myself, I would have left long before now to ask at every train station in each direction,” the more tractable of his children stated.

“I wouldn’t send you on such an impossible errand,” the doctor said with this new kindness that had grown up between them. “I thought it would be a simple matter of tracking the scrapes Ethan is bound to get caught up in. How can he hide himself in a civilized country so effectively? His experience is in the American wilderness, I would have thought. He never struck me as that intelligent. And Dorian Gray can’t be of any practical value. Though his scientific value would be inestimable,” he finished on a mournful note.

Izzy began one of her keening laments from the cell where they kept her, a windowless room among the several that made up their little warren. The location had been painstakingly selected by Caliban for his new domestic life, but Frankenstein had transferred his most essential equipment there when he realized he would need a place to work where Sir Malcolm and the rest could not locate him.

“You know what I want, you bastard! Let me out!” the woman slurred as well she could against a rattling of chains.

Being a spectator for this sickly domestic drama was not good for the concentration, and Victor began to chafe against being stuck there, dependent upon the Caliban who was only too glad to steal him food and supplies. Frankenstein pushed his meal away and got up to tend to the patient.

“I think she is doing a bit better on these new injections,” his son was saying in front of his bride, who was kept sedated these days. “Perhaps we should keep her on this formulation.”

Victor was preparing a new dose while the girl uttered obscenities and strained against her chains. Caliban was saying soothing things while trying to comb her hair. Izzy looked outwardly perfect despite her incarceration, but her other needs seemed to be getting more violent in response. This could only go on so much longer.

The doctor thought of the way Caliban had ripped apart his dear Proteus out of jealousy. He didn’t think it was possible for a regular human’s strength to accomplish this, as Caliban had described easily besting a few thugs who tried to get back at him for stealing. Both members of the monstrous couple were incongruously strong. But those the doctor brought back from the dead were immortal but not invincible, apparently. They were frozen in time, but when the strand was pulled just right, they would collapse in a bloody mass like his favorite second son.

Of course, Frankenstein thought of Proteus’ murder at the hands of his firstborn during his long hours of pretending to work in his reduced quarters. If only he could find out how Caliban had done it, he’d get rid of that prostitute who was such a liability. It was dealing with her doting spouse that would be the problem. The eldest loved having a dependent, if drooling, pet. Sometimes Victor hoped that Caliban would perform the miracle himself when he tired of Izzy’s compulsion to escape and sample other male specimens. The marriage seemed to be like any other in that the routines were more important than anything else.

The scratching of a slate made them both turn around in surprise.

“He’s not only mute, he moves like a cat,” Caliban said of the boy Horace. “I suppose I don’t mind you letting him have the run of the place.”

“Horace is completely trustworthy,” the doctor said, his hand moving to tousle the visitor’s hair and then checking the gesture, lest he make his jealous son see the boy as a rival. “You seem excited. Do you have news?”

His assistant nodded and handed over the slate. “One of my friends finally got in with the house of Gray,” he read aloud.

“Excellent. And they noticed something unusual?”

Horace wrote a new message. “He talked to the parlor maid. She said Mr. Gray dressed and left and they haven’t heard from him since.”

“But we already know that,” Caliban protested. “We need to know where he’s gone.”

“Wait, he dressed, as in he dressed himself?” Dr. Frankenstein asked. Horace agreed with a light in his eyes. “A gentleman doesn’t dress himself. My theory is correct, then. It must be the American in that body. That would have been past ‘one sun.’ The potion must still be in effect. I wish I understood how it works.”

Dr. Frankenstein was lost in chemical calculations for a moment when he felt the tug at his sleeve. He took the sheaf of newspaper clipping from Horace. “Gypsies on the move. Somewhat more than usual rash of thefts. If they had been killed in the gruesome manner that is Chandler’s hallmark, that would be interesting, but—“

“They’re superstitious like no one else, and they’re all migrating to parts north and east,” the boy wrote. “I’ve read the papers for days and this is the only thing that stood out.”

“Let’s go see if there’s anything in it,” Caliban said. “If they have seen Ethan for what he is, then let’s see what their witchcraft makes of me, or what I make of them.”

The doctor was contemplating whether his eldest’s skill at violence could be trusted to be discreet when he heard a voice.

“Ethan could never get in with the gypsies, I told him so,” Izzy said with unusual clarity. Victor gazed at the syringe still in his hand, and then at the momentarily lucid woman.

“Ethan has a history with gypsies? You remember him?” he demanded.

“Oh yes, he has a massive one and what’s more, knew exactly how to use it to make a girl feel like a queen. Not like this one here, too busy spouting poetry to attend to his poor wife.”

Caliban snatched the syringe and made as if to use it to quiet his spouse. “I can’t listen to this, not after all I’ve done,” he complained while first Victor and then also Horace tried to wrestle the implement away.

“Oh, I need what my American can do for me. Let me out! Let me out I need it something terrible, and at least he knows what’s what,” Izzy shrieked, gyrated her pelvis and tore at her shackles. It was her first real memory from her previous life, and since she usually spouted such drivel her creator had given up on the girl making any sense.

Victor appealed to Caliban, “You remember how you are drawn to certain areas of the city, places where a remnant of memory draws you?”

Caliban relinquished the needle. “You think she can find her former partner.”

“Given how—motivated—she seems to be about it, yes, I think it is very likely.”

“It’s probably safer than leaving her here with this one. He doesn’t look strong enough to give her the medication,” Caliban said, referring to the skinny boy who obviously worshiped his savior.

The monster was jealous of this protégé but hadn’t yet decided to do away with the competition as he had with the doctor’s other son. He had just managed to make the doctor look at him with something other than hate, and that mattered to Caliban more than he would like to admit.

“We’re not going to bring your assistant, are we?” was Caliban’s only question.

“No,” Frankenstein said. “I would rather have him here working on some experiments.”

The two were engaged in some technical discussion. Victor said over a shoulder to his son, “I need you to fill ampoules with as much serum as we have. Don’t make the doses too strong. We need her to be somewhat aware so she can sense the proximity of the thing she wants.”

The monster obeyed without complaining. He’d just decided that first on his kill list would be this Ethan whose memory made Isolde more enthused than anything her lawful husband had been able to give her.

While father and son bought every newspaper and worked to isolate Dorian’s and Ethan’s location from the mass exodus of gypsies from the west country, Horace disappeared into the slums where he lived. He was patient and careful, and thus considered it his responsibility to carry on his habits as Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant and connection to various London underworlds. Thus, Horace returned from scouting the morgues for interesting specimens and found an associate pacing inside the attic where his family of rejects called home.

“You remember you asked me to keep tabs on Sir Malcolm’s household?” asked a boy who looked normal until he took off his hat. His hair had been scalded almost all off by a careless mother, and the sight made for decent begging as well as a useful ability to pass for normal when needed.

“Did you hear something?” Horace wrote. This boy was also a most valuable resource among the illiterate masses because he could read.

“The cook thinks they’re all a strange breed in that house, but they pay well. This time she says everyone is all in an uproar after Sir Malcolm heard something from his bank. To Liverpool they’re headed, bag and baggage, the lot of them, she thinks. The telegram came from there, so the delivery boy said. Everyone started scurrying around while the man himself called for a return telegram to his bank to make sure it was right. Old Malcolm’s rolling in it, she thought, so why should he pack up everyone, even that African of his, to deal with a bank matter?”

“Have they left yet?” Horace asked, only a slight tremor in his chalk betraying his excitement.

“If they haven’t it’ll be soon. The cook was expecting time off come this evening. You said you wanted to know anything unusual that went on there,” the visitor said pointedly after Horace went for his coat and cap.

Frankenstein’s assistant made a sheepish gesture and emptied his pockets into his scout’s hands. “Thank you,” he scrawled and then climbed down the ladder and rushed towards Frankenstein’s lair.

Soon Frankenstein and his two children were situated in a private carriage thanks to the abundant pilferings of Caliban. Once at the train station, Victor used his best doctorly manner to tell the conductor that he was moving two patients to a private sanatorium out west, and he would be very much obliged to being carried with a minimum of fuss.

“They aren’t contagious, are they?” the railway man had asked of the man with the hat pulled down low over his face and the woman who was lifted by the other two into the carriage.

“Not at all, I assure you,” Frankenstein replied. Then they were off. The only thing to do was keep a very excited Izzy medicated enough to ignore all the male specimens in the next car. Father and son planned to keep up regular injections until they neared Liverpool and her help in locating Ethan would be needed.

\--------

Dorian lay panting in what was to be the last coupling in their private caravan. “I don’t know what I’ll do when we have to give up our little home on wheels,” the big man said. “I need you several times a day, my pet. Perhaps I should dress you up as a woman while we’re seeing to things in Liverpool. Keep your mouth shut and society would smile upon my desire for my delicate mate a little more.” He ran his big hand down the naked back.

Ethan’s body was too sated to flinch away, but he wanted to. He hated the stream of demeaning utterances that came out of his partner’s mouth at all times, but especially when the smaller man was working hard at holding on to his contentment. He, too, would hate giving up their privacy, but he had his own inquiries to make in Liverpool. Not the least of which would be whether Dorian was really interested in only him, or whether he would make a beeline to the nearest brothel, as Ethan predicted.

At least some part of Dorian’s insatiable sexual need for Ethan had little to do with him and more about convenience. Ethan was a discreet and shamefully willing partner at a time when Dorian couldn’t risk showing his face to the populace. His knowledge about Dorian Gray’s legendary need for variety now ate away at Ethan who, when he stopped to think about it, had no need to keep his face secret nor to stay by a wanted man’s side. But there he stayed, at times seething with jealousy during the couplings Ethan sought with at least as much compulsion as his partner. It felt as though Dorian was picturing someone else in his place, and Ethan didn’t know which of the libertine’s many partners that could be. He didn’t want to stoop to ask, but he felt the presence there in the most intimate postures he allowed himself to be twisted into.

Ethan’s mind was in a ferment. He couldn’t tell if Dorian kept talking about how weak and effeminate he was because it obviously made Ethan angry, or because he missed the relations with women that had made up the majority of the gentleman’s excesses. With relatively fewer men to compete with, Ethan had hoped that their unique relationship as men who were also beasts put them on firmer footing.

He couldn’t see that the Dorian body he wore was materially different than before, other than playing the receptive role in bed. Dorian Gray must have never looked at his sexually ambiguous self very well when he was wearing it, was the most likely explanation. The aristocratic skin was always pale and pure. The trim form did possess smallish but round buttocks that Ethan had always thought of as proportional in Dorian, whose tailoring seemed designed to downplay this attractive feature. Now Dorian liked nothing better than pounding and bouncing this backside he saw as belonging exclusively to Ethan.

The least likely explanation for Dorian’s behavior was also the one that Ethan liked the least. He would rule it out for sure when they got to the city.

The two slept a few hours and then woke up to take the essentials from their cart and let the horse loose not too far from a town. Ethan watched it go, sure it would find what it needed. Animals always do.

“What are you thinking about my darling? Your dislike for the city? I find myself not dreading it. I have some distractions in mind for us before we go to the land of the Bible-black clergyman,” Dorian said, the larger of their packs on their back. He squeezed the fascinating bottom one last time and they set off.

They walked, hoping to find a farm vehicle or something where they could hitch a ride. They’d both practiced their accents enough that they hoped to pass for immigrant laborers without attracting too much attention.

And that’s what happened. It was close to harvest time, after all, and thus laborers were moving around England and Europe. A few were probably heading to try their luck in the factories of Liverpool, or beyond, to compete with the laborers in the fields of Ireland.

When they reached the city, Dorian followed Ethan’s unerring sense of where to find false documents for the paperless American with the dangerous face. Dorian sat back and admired the negotiations and instructions his partner imparted to the lizard-like forger he chose because the man seemed to care only about the money, and lack any initiative to try and discover their true identities.

It felt good to be the one in control, Ethan thought. The papers would take a few days to produce, like any good forgeries, and so they had some time to waste. Ethan claimed a few errands he’d like to run in preparation for their new life. He left Dorian to his fidelity test and made a planned stop at a bank. Then he inquired until he located a tiny shop run by a wizened old priest.

“I’d like a medal, please,” he said to the cleric.

“Any special one in mind?” the man asked, indicating the case full of relics.

Ethan stood there for a moment, overcome with nostalgia for Brother Simon and the peaceful life they’d shared. Then he realized he’d not thought about which medal would be best. He discarded St. Francis, who was good for wolf-taming, because that wasn’t his most pressing concern at the moment. “Do you have any Archangel Raphaels?” he asked.

“Yes of course. Very good for getting to the heart of the matter, archangels are,” the priest said, moving to one of the small cubbyholes at the back of a shelf and retrieving the medal. “I can tell you know a little about spiritual helpers, because I only rarely get a call for such a powerful advocate.”

“I knew a saint once, Father. He must have been—he made a believer even of me.”

“There are many more beings that walk the earth than most people credit,” the priest said. “Would you like a chain for it? The silver chains are rather dear, but I can offer you a leather thong for a few shillings extra.”

“That would be very kind. Thank you.” Ethan laid the money on the counter and watched the priest string the consecrated item. He picked it up by the thong and placed it carefully in his billfold. “Keep the change, Father. I truly appreciate seeing a friendly face.”

“And I pray that whatever the archangel tells you, my son, you have the strength to hear. Raphael is a powerful tonic. I hope your hurt is not too great.”

Then Ethan returned to the rooms they had rented in a boarding house for workingmen. He and his mate wandered around the city, arranging for transport to Ireland right before the moon came upon them. Even Dorian was tense with their cycle coming up, and Ethan was wondering if they should postpone their journey until after they had shed their beastly natures for another month. He was consumed with so much worry that he was glad when the big man crept off to what were surely profane distractions in the city’s pleasure-houses.

The planner of their expedition was in the boardinghouse room considering if he had the strength to know the truth when Ethan heard his friend’s knock at the door.

“I have a surprise for you, poppet,” the big man said in a low voice. “Make yourself look presentable.”

After some argument, Ethan put on the one fine suit he had conserved from the real Dorian’s wardrobe. That he was every inch the effete English gentleman under a shabby overcoat was not his most pressing concern.

His heart in his throat, Ethan listened to Dorian describe his afternoon exploring the brothels of Liverpool. “Most of them are of the lowest quality, but I did find a place where I would like to show you off.”

“How did you plumb these depths?” Ethan couldn’t help asking.

“I’ve sampled the earth’s pleasures enough to know my own taste,” Dorian said with a wicked grin.

They entered an establishment that appeared to be a standard tavern that acted as a first step towards gaining other pleasures. The big man walked in as if he owned the place and greeted the barman while walking straight to a door hung with a red curtain. A large thug stepped back without demanding any explanation.

“You can’t have been very discreet if everyone knows who you are,” Ethan griped.

“I’ve told everyone all about you. It’s you they’re wishing to see,” Dorian said, his arm in the small of Ethan’s back on this side of the curtain.

There was a small raised stage and people, mostly men, milling about with drinks in their hands and jaded expressions in their eyes. Several people came over excitedly, certain ones very interested in Dorian and others very eager to know Ethan.

“This must be the fine gentleman you told us about,” one said.

“He looks to be in his first youth.”

“That skin has never had the touch of a razor, I trow,” one man said, turning Ethan’s reddening face back and forth.

“Never seen him use one,” Dorian asserted, pinching Ethan’s cheek.

“I can’t wait to see if you were telling a lie about his capabilities. He looks quite unspoiled.”

“I told no lie. My plaything is a wonder to behold. Just you wait.”

A small man had come up to them and was waiting for the clientele to stop gushing. He cleared his throat, and Dorian peeled off a few bills and handed them over with a grin. “If you and your companion would care to follow me.” He led them behind a curtain. “You may take off as much or as little as you wish. I’ll inform your audience that you will begin in a moment.”

Ethan could take it no longer. He had to know. Dorian was standing there grinning at him as if all of their very dangerous problems mattered not at all. Ethan couldn’t focus on what the impresario was saying, but he heard the spectators calling out in enthusiasm.

“Are you ready, dear one?” Dorian asked, his hands already inside the other man’s clothes.

“Will you do something for me, Dorian? I bought a good-luck talisman. Would you wear it for me?”

“If it would set your mind at rest, of course, my sweet.” The leather thong was slipped around his neck, and then the big man led the small one onto the stage with its low velvet seat that made Ethan shudder with the thought of what it had picked up from previous performances.

He let himself be denuded by his partner, who was soon wearing nothing but his pants. Feeling very small and vulnerable, a naked Ethan watched the scene unfold in a type of horror. This was not Dorian’s salon, where everyone was there to please him. It was a public place in a strange city, and these were men paying for the privilege of leering at his distended backside. There were delighted gasps.

“You can see I did not exaggerate my lovely boy’s charms,” Dorian said to their watchers as he played with the loose skin around the channel that had been constantly abused for the last near-to-a-month. The other hand kneaded the little, plump backside.

Ethan was quite sure he couldn’t leap of the stage if the wanted to. A familiar paralysis was on him. He couldn’t leave because that swollen member was near, the one that was so good at making him forget everything. That coarse hand was ready to take mastery over his orifice, and Ethan felt himself begin to quiver in anticipation.

His buttocks were to the audience and Dorian was busy showing the onlookers how much the smaller man could take. Ethan pulled the other bare chest close to his and began whispering one of Brother Simon’s prayers. His partner was so busy expanding the most used portion of his anatomy to the delight of the crowd, that he seemed to take no notice until the metal began to heat up between them and then smoke.

Ethan reached and picked up the piece of medal from Dorian’s chest where it had left a mark, as he had expected it would. A properly sanctified relic would mark a man like Dorian, who was obviously not himself, beyond what any change of bodies or new half-wolf constitution could account for. The hand was opening him, opening him before the crowd, and Ethan almost wanted to stop there, to not know the rest of the story—exactly what was possessing Dorian Gray so that a prayer of exorcism singed his flesh.

The smaller man couldn’t move while he was being displayed before the brothel. Ethan took his hand and clenched his fingers around the medal while he pressed his eyes shut.

He opened them when the pain was unbearable. The scorch marks on his hands were unmistakable. He was also possessed.

“Don’t be nervous, my love,” Dorian said suddenly in his ear. “I want to show all these people that you have a talent for making me happy, and that I can do the same. Will you show them for me, how well we love?”

It was Dorian’s first use of the word love, and Ethan caught his breath. He saw only the dark eyes burning into his and then did not resist when he was placed facedown on the chaise longue, which was angled toward the audience. Ethan could feel the big hand and its throbbing contents traveling together inside of his splayed-open channel. Hand and shaft worked in concert to fill his very great need. The hoots from the spectators faded away.

The world always faded away when he was in love, Ethan recalled with a cry as he entered the fantasy he had been building these several weeks. Together, they were building a private place that none of these people would ever know. Soon he and his mate would be in a new place. They would find a cottage somewhere remote and raise some livestock—chickens, sheep, to feed their tastes—in addition to hunting. They would live by the sea, perhaps. Dorian’s fortune could do all that and more.

Brona had told him many stories about how Ireland was a land where the spirits existed just on the other side of the thinnest veil. Maybe they would not be the only strange creatures. From everything he heard, the Irish had kept some of their ancient wisdom. They would find someone who could reverse the potion, he was sure of it.

For the moment, his smaller body was granting him abundant pleasures. Two voices cried out. The softer, more effeminate one was no less certain than its masculine counterpart.

Looking forward to protecting their new happiness by regaining the strong body that was naturally his, Ethan momentarily forgot the group of people who had come up to the edge of the stage to see what damage Dorian had wrought on the orifice that was almost destroyed.

“He’s the next best thing to a woman, with that notch,” a man leered at the part of Ethan that couldn’t hold on to what Dorian had just released with such force.

“Put him in a bodice and petticoat and that lovely thing would look right at home,” another man said. “Such lips, such skin. Those hips. And then that jade’s cock-alley underneath.”

His thoughts were interrupted by the deep kiss from the man who had just become one with him. Ethan didn’t bother to close his thighs because he couldn’t deny how much he had enjoyed that experience, nor what he was best at. They had witnesses.

Dorian’s thick fingers played with the site where he had just been, his tongue paused to worry at the nipples that had become so sensitive, and then the big head dipped down to worship the mark he had made. Ethan looked out into the paying customers who were pressing their hired companions to their knees while gazing at the loose flesh displayed on the stage. They couldn’t know, but now Ethan did: he was the next best thing to a woman.

He was possessed with Silver Bow’s female side, as Dorian was possessed with the commanding, male side of the Indian whom Ethan had been only too glad to serve years ago, as he was now. Each of their secondary sex characteristics were accentuated, slightly different than they had been before they switched forms. Just as Silver Bow’s responses were different depending upon her current gender.

The heavy arms lifted Ethan up as if he were nothing, and he vaguely remembered having done the same with the Indian girl who sometimes shared his bed. She encircled her man’s neck the way he did now with Dorian. The lips that found each other were a muddle of the old Ethan and his Native mate, and the two men who’d found a new lease of life by trading bodies.

“Let me find a private room for us, sweet, and then I’ll ravish you all over again. And again. Do you see now that I could never need anyone the way I need you?” Dorian asked. His mind hadn’t retained a thought for weeks, but if he could have thought at that moment it would have been that he never wanted to lose the happiness he had found wearing this powerful body, bearing the mark of a beast, and possessing Ethan—three inseparable delights.

Ethan felt their clothes piled on top of him and then he prepared to be carried into the inner section of the brothel. He didn’t car that in this whorehouse he was more content than he had been since running with his old band. Now at least, he could understand why this passivity made him unable to resist any of his mate’s demands. For Dorian was his mate, and they were two halves of a whole that could never be kept apart.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dorian and Ethan are finally tracked down by the two parties that have been following them. Some of the forces that have been keeping the two men in the wrong bodies are revealed, and the couple looks to their new life together.

One of the brothel’s employees led the way for the Dorian with Ethan in his arms.

“You gentlemen are welcome here any time you like. No charge from now on,” the frock-coated man panted. His eyes were wheeling between the delights offered by the bigger and the smaller man, who had just displayed their bodies before the appreciative crowd that was now letting out their excitement with the establishment’s employees.

“It’s very kind of you to let us have some time alone,” Dorian said as they entered a dark hallway away from the noise. “This one really lets go when there’s no one to hear him beg other than me.”

Ethan was both too satisfied to be ashamed and too needy for more to argue.

The man took two candelabra from a collection on a table and lit all the candles.

“Most of the city’s emporiums for sensual entertainment let out onto the catacombs,” the oily little impresario said as he moved a carpet to the side and pulled up a large trapdoor. “We often have important guests who like to come and go from their diversions in complete privacy. And then we have certain pursuits, like those of a very talented photographer, that benefit from the ambience down here.”

Neither Ethan nor Dorian felt at all uncomfortable underground, so their pulses quickened together as the man showed them down a long, dank passage to a room with a plain bed and mirrors on every surface. “I’ll pay you whatever you like if you leave me to my work,” Dorian rumbled dangerously after his burden was set down onto the bed with care.

“Oh no, sir, this is on the house—after your very—stimulating—performance.” Their guide was breathless as he watched Dorian’s splendid member rearing towards its target.

One of the lights was snatched from their guide and the door was slammed in his face.

“Do you see, my love? I only wish to please you,” the big man declared. For the first time, Ethan could see the compulsion in his partner matched his own need to become one. “Only you make me feel this way. You satisfy me and yet you make me sure I will never get enough of my poppet, my silken flower.”

Here Dorian’s mouth continued his speech with a wordless chapter directed at Ethan’s ruined aperture.

Ethan no longer noticed that the face burrowing into his most intimate space was the one he had worn all his life. His new life was too confusing for introspection, but if he could have reflected, Ethan would see that the features Dorian wore now had the imprint of truth. Dorian Gray became more himself in the big, powerful, well-endowed body. And at this moment, when  Ethan began to beg for something to fill his needy tunnel, the American should have seen that he could be more himself without a bulky and intimidating frame.

His hand was still smarting from his experiment with the medal. He didn’t understand why his old husband had come back from the dead in halves, but he did feel that some caring force had been trying to break through the unending darkness he’d felt since that time.

“This unexpected relationship must have been Silver Bow’s gift to me,” Ethan thought as the big, rough hands caught on his smooth skin. His sweet hips had begun to double-joint in their eagerness to take Dorian in. “I’ve not felt as close to anyone since he died.” The passive partner felt like a lifetime of loneliness and unmet needs was disappearing with every delve of that commanding length of flesh. “If only I’d had this all along—a lover who was also a member of the wolf clan—then perhaps I would not have killed so many people. Silver Bow always said our kind couldn’t tolerate loneliness.”

Everything in his misspent life was falling into place as the big man’s fist-covered member filled Ethan in the only way that could now. His soft voice cooed in agreement with the debasing names Dorian liked so much. Images were rushing in the smaller partner’s mind, telling him that everything Silver Bow had taught him from across the great beyond would inform the men’s new life after they returned to their normal forms.

The door flung open.

“Ethan! I found you at last!” a disheveled woman was crying out from where she was being restrained by two men.

Ethan recognized Dr. Frankenstein and Brona, but he was unable to make sense of either of them appearing at that particular door.

“Ethan, you were giving it away to that slut but not to me?” Brona was shrieking. She was directing herself more to the real Ethan but her body was trying to sling itself at Dorian, who was wearing the physicality she craved.

“Help me give her another injection,” Dr. Frankenstein grunted. He and the other man, whose face was marred by scars, struggled for a few moments and then the woman was marginally more compliant.

“There were only two invited to this party, but it’s interesting to note that you do have prurient interests, doctor,” Dorian sneered. He had slung the sheet over his lover but let his own manhood display its impatience to get on with its task.

“Br-Brona? I saw you die.” For one moment, Ethan was overjoyed that a single person he’d lost was not really gone. Perhaps like Silver Bow, all of his losses were being wiped away. Then he saw the bloodless doctor standing there with some facsimile of shame on his face and it began to make sense.

“You.” He leapt out of bed, forgetting he was a mere slip of a thing with a wrecked orifice streaming with a previous deposit. “If you turned her into one of your experiments, so help me, I’ll send you to the hell you deserve and not the hell you seem compelled to create.”

Dorian was by his side in a moment. “I know her. You introduced me to her once, and then one time she—came to my home. She had advanced consumption.” He came closer to examine the girl. “But she looks perfect.”

“She’s not too perfect,” Caliban said defensively to the big man. “And I’d thank you not to look at my wife like a cut of mutton. I know all about your libertine ways, Mr. Gray.”

When the doctor spoke for the first time it was with a great weariness. “Ethan, Mr. Gray, please meet my son.” The word surprised him by not coming out coated with too much distaste. “And his wife. This is not your Brona anymore, Ethan. Please understand this. She merely provided—the possibility—of Caliban having an immortal mate to join him in eternity.”

The girl had recovered a little from her medicine. “Ethan, how could you leave me alone with these people? I need it something awful, and you always knew how to do the job. You even ran off to the gypsies without me,” she was saying to the slender man. Meanwhile her body was straining towards the retreating big man who, not knowing her so well, had retained his faculties well enough to realize that this unnatural creature wished to mate with him.

“Why are you here, Frankenstein, and when will you be leaving? You’ve upset Ethan,” Dorian demanded.

It was true. Ethan found himself to be more emotional these days, and he hated that the tears were coursing down his cheeks. He had let Brona into his life, the first in years, and she had died with such suffering. The stone walls were absorbing her screeches as she uttered all manner of filthy invitations to Dorian, interspersed with the tender and childlike reminiscences she directed at Ethan’s soul, whom she had touched so deeply.

“You had no right,” Ethan found his voice enough to say. “Brona was treated like garbage her entire life, and then the ragpicker plucks her from the rubbish heap to content his son—“

“I gave her a new life, with new opportunities for happiness,” the doctor’s smooth voice said. “Prepare another injection, Caliban.”

“And if I wished she could extend her short, miserable stay on this earth, I would never want it to be, once again, as a plaything,” Ethan retorted. “You think that just because I’m wearing this body I can’t harm you, but I remember exactly how to make a man hurt.”

Dorian restrained him. “I’m giving you five minutes to explain why you followed us from London, bribed that revolting little brothel-keeper, no doubt, and chose to parade your abomination before my Ethan.”

“As you know, I helped create the potion that placed you in each other’s bodies. I deduced said that you had gotten stuck that way, and this naturally attracted my scientific interest. If you will allow me to experiment upon you, I’m sure you can be returned to your normal forms.”

“Then why bring your harpy?” Dorian asked. The woman was shrieking worse than ever as she tried to understand why she was attracted to two Ethans at the same time. Frankenstein’s misshapen companion was merely standing there with the syringe in hand, hypnotized.

“Don’t you remember, love? We were going to sail the high seas together? You were going to take me to America and we’d have a farm together. Just you and me, you said. There’s no kinder man than you, Ethan. No one else would have stayed with me to the end, my great hulking angel—”

Her speech degenerated into lewd requests.

Frankenstein was going on about some scientific theory. Ethan was weeping at the sweet Brona imprisoned once more in a body that was not worthy of her. Dorian was beginning to bring his fists up to pummel that reptilian doctor for interrupting their idyll.

“How could you?” Caliban burst out. “After all I’ve done for you, you prefer this one?”

“That’s right, now is the time,” Frankenstein murmured. His son hesitated. “We don’t need that one. Go ahead while I take care of the other.”

The plan all along had been to kill Ethan, the less-interesting, non-immortal half of the transformed pair. Frankenstein had encouraged his son to be jealous of Ethan’s soul while dismissing the body as the less-meaningful part of Brona’s former life.

Secretly, the doctor had hoped that the coveted member attached to Dorian Gray would help satisfy Izzy’s raucous desires.

He had a new syringe in his hand as he advanced towards Dorian. “We mean no harm. When someone comes back from the dead they have a few memories, but they are very strong. We brought Izzy so she could lead us to you.”

“Izzy?”

“Her name is Isolde,” Caliban said to Ethan. “And she is mine. I’ve paid the price, haven’t I?”

The monster’s hands reached the overwrought Ethan’s neck.

“Don’t hurt him! He’s the only one for me!” Izzy cried.

She leapt upon Caliban, who was struggling with Ethan on the ground. Dorian jumped on the pile of struggling forms.

“You! I’m the only one for you, you bitch!” Caliban grunted.

Even the doctor, who was so good at dispassionate observation, had a hard time untangling how it happened. He had watched his firstborn tear apart his second-born with his bare hands, so Frankenstein knew his immortal offspring could kill one another. Somehow, all his son’s rage at being neglected by his wife, all Izzy’s need for her divided human lover, translated into the married couple’s soup of fluids and body parts strewn on the floor of that hired room.

It was just in time for Ethan, too, who huddled on the floor away from the muck. Then he took in the inert form next to him. “What have you done to Dorian?” he demanded of the doctor.

“It’s merely a strong sedative,” Frankenstein began. “I wished him no harm.”

“I’d think the people you wish to help are the ones who have the most to fear from you, Doctor,” Sir Malcolm said from the doorway.

The injection began to wear off, however, and the big man was soon stirring.

“You and the inimitable Miss Gray are always welcome to my parties, Sir Malcolm, but Ethan and I were hoping for a great deal of private time together,” Dorian said thickly.

Vanessa’s demure smile said that she was completely unsurprised by the dismemberment and debauchery. Ethan hastened on with his clothes under that frank gaze.

“I can understand why a man of your—interests—would be drawn to someone with Dorian’s gifts, Dr. Frankenstein, but I can’t understand how you proposed to imprison him in your laboratory indefinitely,” Malcolm said. “You can see your sedative had little effect.”

The doctor and the explorer began talking about the effects of rare drugs.

“There are some things you should know,” Vanessa murmured to Ethan. “It’s why the potion didn’t reverse, and why the two of you were so hard to find on the astral plan. You, Ethan, are completely changed and yet more yourself.” Her tongue moistened her lips at his blush. “We were watching through an aperture in the wall. It seems the local brothel-owners like to double their incomes by appealing to voyeurs of every taste.”

Ethan sat down heavily on the bed. He stared straight back at this woman who always ended up seeing everything sooner or later. “My tastes are no one’s business but mine and Dorian’s. This is why we wanted to get away. We’ll never be free of people watching and judging us.”

“It appears that you had an astral spectator who was very insistent about you and Dorian getting together,” she said gently. “A certain person from your past. Silver Bow?”

Ethan gritted his teeth. “I know all about my private affairs in this world and the next, as it happens.” He showed the mark left by the consecrated medal and explained the personas he and Dorian had taken up, which were more like his deceased husband/wife than the one personality their partner had assumed in real life.

“You are resourceful!” Vanessa cried. “There was another person from your past who showed up to my séances. I’d wager he helped lead you to those conclusions.”

It was too much to think of the saintly Brother Simon watching Ethan’s debauched (but very satisfying) life.

“I’ll thank you to stop prying into my life, either with your terrestrial or other eyes,” he snapped. “We didn’t need your help. We could have managed this traveling circus,” he said of the remains.

Dorian had been regaining his senses and the two men were exchanging looks full of murderous intent regarding the doctor. “Should we wait until tomorrow when the moon cycle starts?” Dorian asked. “I’d like to hunt down this squirrelly creature, though there’s not much meat on him.”

“You’ve contracted Ethan’s condition?” Sir Malcolm asked.

“That must have contributed to why I couldn’t pick up your trail!” Vanessa exclaimed.

“I’m now terribly sorry for making you part of our rescue plan, Dorian,” Malcolm said with real sorrow. “I suppose none of us were thinking about what might happen because we wanted to save Ethan from the noose. Now you are marked for life.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Dorian said with a meaty paw somewhere on Ethan’s lower back. “I’ve never had such fun in all my life, so if you tracked us all this way to rescue or apologize, we need neither. Though Ethan does require a few other things I have yet to give him.”

The blush spread further across the smaller man’s cheeks. Vanessa tracked its progress with avid eyes.

Dr. Frankenstein had been inspecting the remains of his son and daughter-in-law. “If things didn’t turn out as I planned, getting rid of those two was a mercy.”

“You betrayed our trust, Doctor,” Sir Malcolm said with all the force of his remaining moral authority behind him. Ethan had experienced this tendency to wilt in front of the fatherly figure, and the doctor was looking quite chastened.

“I meant you no ill will, Ethan, only Caliban was out for someone’s blood and I wanted to possess the secret of eternal life. To do it properly, instead of siring these monstrosities.” Victor’s slim hand moved towards the muck on the floor.

“No ill—“ Dorian had lunged towards the scientist, with Ethan pulling him backwards. “He thought he could take you away from me and then keep me as an experiment! This one is twisted, I’ve always thought so about Frankenstein, love.”

Sir Malcolm’s raised eyebrows at the endearment were met by Vanessa’s most satisfied expression.

“So if you don’t mind,” Ethan said.

“Get that insect-like gaze away from us, “ Dorian completed.

“I believe there is one thing the doctor can still do for us,” Sir Malcolm said.

The couple looked blank.

“He had already prepared an antidote in case the potion didn’t reverse on its own,” Malcolm said. “Vanessa has made an, er, close study of the forces keeping you two in the wrong body, and she is confident she can convince these obstacles to divert their focus long enough to place you in the correct bodies.”

The man’s discomfort about Vanessa’s “study” was not lost on either Ethan or Dorian, but there was no chance to inquire further.

“I’ve not tested this treatment. It may not work,” the doctor said sulkily. “It’s bound to take some experimentation.”

“But we have every faith in your abilities, Dr. Frankenstein,” Sir Malcolm said with that kid-glove holding a dagger tone he brought out sometimes. “Perhaps you would feel more motivated if you ask Mr. Gray for a blood or tissue sample to further your other interests.”

“He’d have to ask very nicely,” Dorian asserted with that new menace that suited him so well. Ethan melted a little into the strong arms and his aperture quivered.

“It’s settled then,” Vanessa said. “Isn’t it?” She was directing herself exclusively to Ethan, and he felt hot and confused from the question.

“I suppose there’s nothing to be done about returning to the doctor’s laboratory, but you must give us three days for our moon cycle,” Ethan returned.

“Of course,” Vanessa answered smoothly. “Sir Malcolm and I wouldn’t mind experiencing more of the delights—“ Malcolm coughed “of Liverpool. And Victor is now a lamb returned to the fold, so I’m sure he won’t mind either.”

Ethan stepped between the scientific covetousness and brute protectiveness that was currently circulating between Frankenstein and Dorian. “I thought you were interested to watch a man transform into a wolf,” he said to the doctor. “Now you can watch two.”

The medical man’s attitude brightened. Soon, the right people had been paid off so that the mess in the catacombs would be forgotten.

Ethan felt rather self-conscious with three spectators watching him transform the next evening, but soon it didn’t matter. He had someone to run with, and not just any someone. He felt closer to Dorian than ever as they explored the countryside and picked off a few sheep. This was the way it was supposed to be. There was no need to eat people, no urge to scatter the remains in some outrage of gore. Ethan allowed himself to relax. He would commit no more crimes, though for one moment their shared wolf-sense had Dorian telling Ethan it would be a lot of fun to chase Frankenstein for a bit.

After the cycle had passed, it was so easy to return to the strange family headed by Vanessa and Sir Malcolm. While the reversal potion was being perfected, Ethan, the head of Gray Hall, brought his paramour to live with him as a sort of bodyguard/companion, and his servants were trained to say nothing about it.

Very soon they submitted to Vanessa’s rituals to lessen the hold of Silver Bow enough so that the two men could take the antidote and sort themselves into the right container.

The night before, Dorian had held the sated Ethan in his arms. “We don’t have to do it, you know.”

“Hmm?” Ethan pushed his sore backside towards his mate. His fingers habitually played with the slack flesh that proved he was good for only one thing.

“We don’t have to reverse the potion,” Dorian said. “We could stay like this, and only Vanessa and Sir Malcolm would know. We could still go to Ireland. It’s not all that safe for one of us to go about in disguises to cover up the recently executed American Ripper being back from the dead.”

Since today’s Dorian mainly spouted filthy commands, Ethan was surprised by this reasonable appeal.

“I want to be able to protect you, protect us, and I can’t do it so well in this body,” Ethan said. “I know how to run from the law, should that face be recognized. I know how to fight better than you. My lies come out better with my own tongue. You’ll see how many more doors are opened to us when I can get my own footing again.”

He turned to look at the face he had a hard time recognizing as his own. “I’ll always desire you. And who knows? This body may have picked up some new interests from its temporary tenant,” Ethan said with several fingers in that gaping place. He wouldn’t mind trying out being the aggressor sometime.

But for now, the smaller man guided the big hand into the home they had made for it with frequent battering. The wide knuckles had gone from being an impediment to a source of craven satisfaction. One last time, Dorian reduced his lover to a begging mess. They slept.

The next day they arrived at Sir Malcolm’s for what was to be the final experiment.  Ethan had insisted that they be allowed some privacy to consume each other’s body fluids with the ritual, so in an empty room the two men reached a self-conscious state of excitation in the other’s lips. With the phials in hand, they swallowed the bitter potion with the taste that now seemed so familiar.

Naked and nervous, they stared at each other. “It might not work,” Dorian said.

“I don’t feel any different,” Ethan answered.

Soon, however, their joints started to pop. Ethan was back at his old height, which felt like he was towering above the ground. His arms and body felt heavy and it took some time mastering their strength.

“All right?” Dorian’s smooth voice asked.

“Yes, I think so. You?” They examined each other and found that everything they’d done to Ethan’s orifice had disappeared now that it belonged to Dorian again.

“My condition won’t allow for a scar or a wound,” Dorian murmured. “Not that I thought of your delightful dimensions as such.”

They only had time to relearn how to kiss as themselves before there was a battering at the door.

“Did it work? I think it must have,” Vanessa’s voice said.

They emerged as themselves and submitted to all the questions and examinations that would prove it.

“Thank you very much, Doctor, everyone, but I really should do something about the lax state of my household. Ethan is inexcusably easy on the servants and they’ve forgotten to keep punctual meals. Are you coming?” Dorian looked up to his lover.

“I will later. First I need to walk around a little. Don’t worry, I’ll wear one of our disguises. You know how it is. I need to move, to attune my senses.”

Ethan dashed out, more sure than ever that he and Dorian had a future together. They had walked in one another’s shoes, and this had brought about an intimacy no couple usually enjoyed.

He returned to the Gray house for the punctual dinner that was the beginning of their longed-for new life together.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ethan and Dorian search for a way to coexist, which may involve a certain amount of compromise.

At first everything was perfect.

The two men spent a lot of time at Dorian’s country house, communing with nature and spending long nights under the sky.

When they were back in London, Ethan enjoyed being the undisputed partner for the man famous for his roving appetites. Ever the dominant, Dorian liked showing off what he was doing to destroy to the anatomy that was reserved for his use. The fact that it seemed to belong to the beefy bodyguard who, up until recently, had been dominating him was a delicious revenge.

The couple watched the other action at these parties and it stimulated what they did together. But what Ethan especially liked were their times just the two of them. He gave himself completely to his mate, and since they were both enjoying the process of him being claimed and dilated once again, this time with the smaller form overpowering the bigger one, Ethan felt as though nothing was left out by their reclaimed identities.

He did feel his old wanderlust again, and with Dorian’s fortune they were able to venture far onto the continent. Now that he had all of his trained nerves back at his command, though. Ethan insisted upon stealing whatever they needed along the way. He gave lessons in outdoor survival skills and picked fights so he and Dorian could analyze them afterwards.

Gradually, however, Dorian began absenting himself from their house. It was always very casual: a special invitation here, an old friend he happened upon there.

It hurt Ethan to no end to think that this love affair arranged by supernatural forces was not enough for his lover. The American had never pledged himself to anyone besides Silver Bow, but commitment had meaning for him, and he was past the point of no return with Dorian.

It didn’t take long for Dorian to start taking part in the action during his naughty soirees. Ethan would sit there, receiving stimulation from his mate while the latter kissed, fondled, filled another. Male or female, it didn’t matter. In either case Ethan felt ashamed that he was being shown as not enough, and that he needed Dorian so badly that he would accept any scrap Mr. Gray deigned to throw him.

A hundred times, Ethan set out to run away. But he never stayed away for longer than a day. He felt a magnetic pull drawing him back to the only place where anything made sense—in Dorian’s arms.

One day he came home to several guests in their bed. That was one step too far. Ethan roared at the interlopers until they disappeared. Then he loomed over the genuinely puzzled Dorian.

“Is this how it’s going to be, then?”

“You were welcome to join in. Are you less interested in women joining in these days? I could adjust my invitations accordingly.”

Ethan stayed out all night walking. He returned for the breakfast that was now always laid for two at Gray Manor.

The next soiree, Dorian enlisted a big man from the audience to take over what he was doing to Ethan.

Ethan was so desperate to please Dorian’s roving eye that he accepted the stranger. He fancied that there was an unusual tenderness in the way Dorian kissed him while the other man exploited him before the others. After such a display, Dorian might avoid others’ company entirely while he evoked what he’d seen Ethan do with another man.

These days with Dorian all to himself were a paradise for Ethan. He also shamefully enjoyed being shown to have no respect or will of his own. At that point the men teased him until he begged to take them in his mouth and Ethan obliged. Mr. Frawley’s pictures captured some expression between desire and humiliation on his face.

Life was a blur of self-hatred and contentment, and he was powerless to figure out which was which or how to stop any of it.

Sometimes Ethan would stay away briefly, just to show his lover he was still capable of it, but the truth was he counted the minutes until he could be back in Dorian’s commanding presence.

“I’m so glad you’re back. I have plans for us,” Dorian said from the breakfast table. He’d not regained his silken dressing gowns and other garments, but had enlisted a tailor to make simple, more outdoorsy clothes. He had complete control over Ethan’s wardrobe, however.

“What sort of plans?” Ethan asked, aware that his excitement was evident. “Are we going to spend time with one of your toys?”

“Today is going to be all about you,” his partner said with a slim arm wound around the big frame. “I know exactly what you like.”

His heart quickening despite himself, Ethan followed Dorian out into the seamier district of the city.

“You sit right there,” Ethan was told. He settled on a gilt couch. “And I’ll see about the entertainment.”

In a few minutes two handsome, strapping men took the stage. Yes, Dorian did know exactly what Ethan liked. But where was he?

A smiling Dorian Gray joined the two men onstage.

Before Ethan could protest, the two men began stripping the slender man. They induced him to take them in his mouth in turn, and then they took turns using him until they finally took him together.

Ethan forgot to be upset for a few minutes. Dorian didn’t enjoy this sort of thing—certainly not being taken. He was always the man in any relations with men. The small man onstage kept eye contact with his mate in the audience. There was something about the look on Dorian’s face as he was subjugated and used that began to make Ethan uncomfortable.

The passive male was wiping his face to clean off the tribute from both his partners when he nakedly flung himself on the couch by Ethan’s side.

“What do you think, love? Looks delightful, doesn’t it?”

A furious Ethan slammed out of the brothel.

He needed nothing other than the clothes on his back. He hitched rides when he could or else stole what he needed for a train ticket. He made it all the way to Ireland before his moon cycle began.

There was a rich, vibrant quality to the countryside and Ethan enjoyed every minute of running by himself. He hired himself out as a farm laborer and moved from place to place. This was where he would have liked to settle with Dorian. There was none of the dishonesty and dirt of the city. Nor the claustrophobic nosiness of English villages. He slept out in the open sometimes, or in hay lofts. Sometimes he found a longer post that offered room and board, but he never stayed too long.

While he wandered, he talked to Silver Bow. Or at least, the sensation that he fancied still hung around him, telling him there was somewhere or someone to be in this aimless life.

The first person he attacked didn’t die, but they very nearly bled to death in the pasture where Ethan’s wolf-self bit him.

Some conscience asserted itself at the last moment, and Ethan bayed before a house until someone came to investigate and found the injured man.

He bit three people the next night, and two the following, shallow wounds so that he could slake his thirst without leaving a lynch mob.

The taste for blood lasted long after the moon cycle ended, however. Ethan traveled as fast as he could from his crime, but some reawakened urge followed him.

Ethan started boxing at amateur rings, punching whoever, threatening travelers in the dark. Anything so that he could let out his need for violence.

As the next moon cycle approached, Ethan was sure he wouldn’t be able to control himself this time. His sensitive nose scented a village with enough people to choose from but not enough to pose a serious threat.

The first night, he scented his quarry and began following it. A man crossing a heath after spending some time with his girl. Totally not paying attention.

The wolf tensed his muscles and poised to lunge.

Another wolf came out of nowhere and wrestled him to the ground. It was difficult to think with his wolf-brain, but his body was responding to the reappearance of Dorian Gray.

To get his point home, Dorian nipped at the other wolf until he drew blood. Ethan hung his head in shame and felt the human victim running away from the snarling.

He followed the dominant wolf, running and tussling and then eating a few stoats and rabbits together.

When the sun came up Dorian put his clothes back on and then followed to where Ethan had left his.

They found a pub that would sell them an early-morning ale and sat on a bench in silence.

“Why did you run away?” Dorian asked with a real note of hurt.

“I don’t know what there is to tell. If you can’t see something wrong with being with all manner of strangers after all we’ve been through together, I can’t explain it to you.”

“We’ve always enjoyed varied distractions,” Dorian said.

“It’s not the same now. Not after all this,” he pointed back and forth to their bodies. “I don’t know what it feels like to you, but us, this is what it’s like to be mated to someone. I feel you everywhere, during moon times or not. I don’t want to feel you fornicating with all and sundry.” He staved off his friend’s objection. “Everything I do is to please you.”

Dorian was touched. “Is that what I am supposed to do? Settle down with you?”

“Stop asking what you’re supposed to do,” Ethan retorted. “Nothing has been mapped out. Not us. We could have done things differently, both of us, but we didn’t. Call it convenience, but I can’t get you out of me now.”

The larger man with a lowering brow regarded the smaller one. It was pointless to have this conversation. Dorian didn’t know how to love. Ethan told himself he was foolish to read anything into their relationship, many times a day.

Dorian stood up and moved them outside into the sunny morning. He ghosted his hand near the other arm. “I am much less worldly than you, Ethan. I had not realized we had gotten so far into foreign—foreign for me— territory until you pointed it out,” he said with soft candor. “I need time to think about how our relationship is to progress, but do know I have no desire to cause you pain.”

“You have a strange way of showing it!” Ethan burst out. “You think I enjoy being your cherub and your beauty? I like some of the things we do together at these parties,” he blushed, “but you have a way of lording it over a man, humiliating me about something we both like.”

“You feel humiliated by me?” Dorian struggled to understand.

“You show people how submissive I am when you make me follow your orders at the salon.” Ethan hated admitting it. Then, unconsciously, he reverted to the earlier hurt when they had exchanged bodies. “And everyone looks and assumes I’m the weaker one, when they don’t know that you never learned how to throw a punch before I schooled you in it. You used to break a finger every time you got in a fight, but your special powers heal you so fast that you didn’t have to learn to do it right.”

He wheeled on the smaller man. “You didn’t earn this body, this knowledge, these instincts. I did. I know why it’s important to cling to the few good things you get in life because there’s not much of it to go around. You’ve never wanted for anything, Dorian, how do you know when the games leave off and the true bits of life begin?”

The American stalked ahead into the fields. His companion rushed to catch up.

“You make me realize I’ve wanted some things without knowing it,” Dorian whispered. “I didn’t like you being gone, and I very much don’t want you to throw away our life on some incidental kill. You’ve mastered the art of living with this condition—why are you forgetting what you know?”

Ethan was always ashamed when this big question mark came up. He had no answer. Instead he returned to his list of hurts. “And that’s another thing, you can’t claim ignorance about what you did to me the last time I saw you. That hurt me.”

“With the two men? I hurt you?” Dorian’s lip curled. “I would have said I got the most painful end of that bargain. And I did it for you.”

“You whored me out and made me watch without being able to do any thing about it!” Ethan could finally give voice to that day’s humiliation. “Just what you wanted to make me feel watching my body be passed around like a plaything servicing strangers, I have no idea.”

“Your body?” Dorian inquired.

The other man reddened. “The body I wore every damn day for a month,” Ethan shot back. “It wasn’t meant to be you on that stage.”

“You want to trade back,” Dorian said thoughtfully. “You still think of this body as yours.”

“Why would I let you have the run of me again?” Ethan asked furiously. “Then I’m smaller than you and you make me your plaything. I have to hope you’re not going to run around—“

“If I gave you assurances, would you like to trade back?” Dorian asked nonchalantly.

Ethan was flustered at the turn the conversation had taken. “Well, what am I to think about the way you looked at me while they had you? It’s not like you enjoy that sort of thing.”

“No, I don’t really,” Dorian said, “but you do. You’re so tense when we have people over. I thought it would excite you to watch and you would try it sometime with me and someone we both agreed upon. No matter what body you’re wearing, I can see through to your deepest desires. You are very, very greedy.”

He risked grazing his hand across his companion’s backside.

“Come back and we can think what would suit you best. Please come back, my poppet.”

“No. I like it here,” Ethan said stubbornly.

“Regardless, I’ll find you at the next moon cycle. You’re ill somehow, love, I can’t let you run around the countryside alone.”

With his full faculties at his disposal, Ethan was confident he could hide his scent from the less-experienced Dorian. He kept on the move as before, never sure if he was avoiding an unequal relationship with Dorian or some pressure to switch bodies once again.

A savage streak had him pacing through the dark country nights. It was getting colder and the work was drying up, so Ethan skirted more populated villages or stole from wayfarers. The change came upon him and he was perfect.

The hot urge that had gotten muddled with his thirst for blood revealed itself to be Dorian. Dorian the wolf was wrestling him to the ground.

They ran together and feasted upon a few chickens, but they were both waiting for their human mouths. “I almost didn’t find you,” Dorian reproached at daybreak. “Why are you making this so difficult?”

The bigger man turned on his heel and walked away, rather than admit he had no idea.

His fellow wolf watched over him the next two nights. “Come back home, Ethan. Vanessa has some ideas—“

“Has it ever occurred to you that I am tired of people making decisions for me?”

This time, Ethan used all his skills. He covered his tracks wherever he went in Ireland. He had studied the maps and knew that there were places so remote that Ethan would have difficulty reaching him in time.

The moon rose and he loped gratefully across a field. He was alone as he was meant to be.

This time, Dorian had to inflict a savage bite upon the other wolf in order to loosen the death-grip Ethan had upon a farmer’s wife who’d gone out to use the privy.

A wild creature understands dominance very well. Ethan was soon cowed into submission with the wolf’s jaws on the nape of his neck. They waited for sunrise.

“Don’t lecture me,” Ethan said when they sat, dirty but clothed, under a small patch of trees. A strip of his shirt had quelled the bleeding.

“I was going to invite you to the rooms I’ve reserved above the pub,” Dorian offered. “The only decent accommodations for miles.”

“All right.” The two exhausted men climbed into the renovated attic above the town tavern.

Vanessa was perched on one bed.

“There are some things you should know,” she said to the scowling Ethan. “I’ve been trying to understand what Silver Bow’s possession means. It seems as though he was drawn to the opening created by your switching bodies, and our tests have shown that he’s still there, watching over you.”

“That chapter of my life is not open to dissection,” he said, sitting heavily on the other bed.

“I think Silver Bow wanted to save you from the hangman, and he still wants to save you from yourself.”

“You tried very hard to elude me this month,” Dorian reproached. “One of these days you’re going to manage it. I won’t let you face the noose again.” He sat next to his lover and put his arm around him.

“Since you’ve obviously been conspiring behind my back, what’s your next plan to save me?” Ethan inquired.

“You had none of these urges when we were together—the other way,” Dorian ventured.

“Something about being in a smaller body, or perhaps that specific body, must be taking away some urge to rend that lives in your other body,” Vanessa added. “You were so happy in that other flesh: you should have seen yourself, Ethan. You were at peace.”

His face flushing with all the very stimulating things he felt compelled to do in the name of peace in Dorian’s form, Ethan sulked. “This is my body. It’s serviceable. I don’t want to be a smooth-cheeked concubine.”

“I’ll show you how much I love you that way,” Dorian rushed to say. “Please, Ethan. Let’s try Frankenstein’s potion once more. We can always reverse it.”

“You promise?”

“Upon my heart that belongs to you.”

Vanessa watched the two men fall asleep in a truce, very pleased with herself.

They traveled back to London and were received with open arms by Sir Malcolm. “Don’t worry me like that, young man,” he admonished Ethan.

Dorian had to return to his flat for some fresh clothes for each of them. Ethan allowed himself to be fussed over, and he was surprised at the real affection the others were radiating at him. Soon, Frankenstein had shown up with his phials, but Dorian was nowhere to be found.

Ethan was distraught. The old worries about his lover not really loving him resurfaced. After all, wasn’t Dorian reclaiming the big, strapping body he wanted, though the Englishman had been careful not to talk about it? All told, Ethan spent a terrible day, cooped up in that airless house that felt like a prison.

Finally, the other man reappeared with a big smile on his face.

“I brought you a present,” he whispered into Ethan’s ear when they were alone.

“I’m sure I would have just preferred a note,” the big man hissed.

Dorian’s hands began working on the other man’s trousers, so Ethan started unbuttoning the narrow trousers belonging to his mate. Ethan’s breath caught when he saw the large ring passing through the head of the penis. “What have you done? It must have hurt terribly.”

“It did, my darling,” Dorian said, passing his arm through his lover’s. “But only for a moment, thanks to my special faculty. So a painless new adornment is my gift to you with this body, as well as the knowledge that you were not contracting some deadly infection in that particular establishment for sailors who are none too picky about how they acquire their fetishes.”

Ethan listened to the tale of how Dorian had seen this particular perversion once and had been dreaming of playing with such a thing attached to Ethan’s member.

“The ring looks so heavy,” Ethan said while they prepared to harvest the necessary potion additive from each other simultaneously. Their hands moved in unison.

“It is, but to feel the extra weight dragging you down as you walk is a thrill like none other,” Dorian gasped. “I can’t wait to see it on you.”

Soon their mouths were poised to consume the fluid and then add the bitter liquid. They swallowed and then lay in bed, at peace with the exchange they were going to make, one among many changes they would make in their lives ruled by the moon.

On schedule their bodies were contorting and rending. When the transformation stopped, Ethan looked down at the hefty ring passing through one area of the body that didn’t feel unfamiliar at all. “Thank you, Dorian, this was really thoughtful. I would be wary of taking such a length but it feels just right.”

“I knew you would like it, poppet,” Ethan said huskily while stooping before the new ring.

Ethan’s hope that Dorian’s new attentiveness to his maleness would be sustained by their new toy was borne out. Dorian had never used his mouth or hands so avidly on this part of his anatomy. The bigger man seemed endlessly excited by this jewelry and liked playing with it while he used another part of Ethan’s flesh.

This part had gone back to its old contracted state since they changed bodies, and both men were eager to work upon the opening until it was as used as it was before. Ethan was given assignments by Dorian, a certain number of exercises a day with a given implement so that the moment his lover walked in the door, he could see that Ethan had been ruining himself in preparation for that moment.

One evening Dorian insisted that they go to one of their habitual brothels. Ethan was still feeling the flush of his newly attentive lover and his attention to the still-tight orifice, so he didn’t go with as much resentment as he used to. Ethan stripped off and stood there by his lover’s side in this venue where powerful men showed off their submissives. For the first time, Ethan saw another man wearing a ring through his glans. It was even larger than the one Ethan wore, and he went over to ask him if it was painful to stretch the skin that much.

“What else can I do?” the young man asked mournfully. “My man says he’ll leave me if I take it out, and so I entertain myself by making the hole larger. It’s a sort of masculinity, I suppose.”

“I think it’s very manly. My man thinks so too,” Ethan said.

“You don’t understand, do you? That big ring proclaims that no sensible man is going to let that inside of him. The jewelry shows that what it is attached to is only there for show.”

Ethan felt terribly betrayed. What he’d taken as a new equality between them was actually just another game, a way to subjugate the man trapped in a weaker body.

They went home and in the middle of the night Dorian found Ethan trying to remove the ring. “Why are you doing this? It was my special gift to you.”

“What I thought was a toy for the both of us was designed to make me your toy,” the soft voice snapped.

“That’s what you were talking with that kept boy about?” asked the Dorian completely at home in his broad frame. “You would deny both of us this pleasure?” His hand began joining in the effort to make his point. “My tongue likes to worry at it…”

Ethan was trying to hold on to his snit under this lingual assault.

“It marks you as mine. Does that not please you?” Dorian took a break to say. “I know it does. I love seeing that you are for me.”

Dorian wheedled and coaxed and after a time he was able to convince his mate to keep the ring. After all, it only prevented a posture that they had never assumed together, and it made all the other things they did much more pleasurable.

Their life together resumed as it was meant to be. This Dorian believed with all his heart, and he also believed that Ethan felt the same way but wouldn’t admit it.

Things weren’t perfect for them, but they never would be. It actually pained Dorian to no end to hurt his lover, but there were some patterns from which they would never break free. Just as he’d quickly grown accustomed to the mastery of the moon, Dorian understood very well there were patterns that would always rule the two men. After several months, he was sure of it.

If Dorian knew another way to do it he would. He brought Ethan onstage at the brothel du jour. He showed off how stretched and useless the delicate man’s orifice had become. The audience hooted at Ethan, jeered at him, and then paid to come up and probe the slack skin.

Then Dorian would choose another plaything from the audience. He would see the outrage spreading across Ethan’s face, anger at having to stay in this slim and powerless body, fury at being humiliated in front of an audience, and especially, the crowning insult of Dorian using his fist on the aperture he’d destroyed himself, while using his manhood upon this stranger.

Dorian could see it happening every time. Ethan tried to close himself, to turn away and not see or cooperate. But Dorian could see the hurt in the smaller man’s face and it fascinated him. He wanted to show it off. The whole point was for the audience to see that someone desired him so much that any rational consideration, any self-respect was ancillary to the desire to be close to his mate. Soon, Ethan would have no objections left. His true desire would assert itself and Ethan would let him in, give himself completely so that Dorian would know that this was the only relation he needed.

Then Ethan would be totally open and defenseless despite his best efforts. He would become greedy, lost in the moment. The audience would fall away. Dorian would withdraw from the third to their party, and then he would take himself in hand and put his fist and its contents all together into the loose, pulsing space.

Then nothing existed but the two of them. That’s not true. Dorian was always aware of the people watching jealously as two men made love in a way the jaded spectators may never have experienced themselves. As someone who had thought himself condemned to tepid novelties, Dorian certainly could tell the real thing from a mere pantomime.

Someone wants me this much. I make him want me like this. Dorian attained a holy ecstasy on these sordid stages. When he climaxed it was with a roar and he poured all of himself into the orifice that couldn’t retain anything at that point. Then he would bend down and use his lips to catch the rivulets trickling down the legs, lick up until he was using his tongue to stimulate the beringed manhood that Ethan had all but given up for his sake. When he took the explosion full in the face they were both at the highest stage of exaltation.

The sound from the onlookers would finally reach them as Dorian kissed Ethan deeply. He wasn’t sure whether his partner realized it, but no matter what humiliations Dorian inflicted upon Ethan in the name of love, the big brute never used his mouth on anyone but the shrinking violet, the hothouse flower that was deserving of such an honor.

Dorian watched his slim companion get dressed in a barn after their night under the moon. They’d switched bodies back and forth a few times, at first to heal injuries that Ethan had suffered and Dorian’s gift could heal easily. They carried phials of the potion around just in case. That switching back meant that they had to start Ethan’s destruction all over again was merely a pleasurable side effect.

Sometimes, Dorian suggested a short-term change because he knew how much Ethan missed being himself. It could never last longer than a month, so it was a small price to pay for happiness.

Ethan did whatever Dorian asked of him, though he indulged in some of the sulking his big mate found so pretty.

With someone to master him, Ethan didn’t have to think anymore. With someone to fill him, his life was no longer empty. The urge to kill never occurred to him while he was being thrown around by the one who knew how to do it best.

Ethan would never admit to his lover that he was less and less interested in taking over his old body, which felt foreign to him now.

Sometimes he went out into the country dark and thanked the husband who never stopped looking out for him. Silver Bow had known him deeply and completely, and cared enough to come from beyond the grave to show Ethan what kind of life would balance his passions at last. Doubly mastered, Ethan would retreat inside and offer everything he had to whatever games Dorian had concocted for that night.

 

 


End file.
